Integrity and Transparency Reports, First Quarter 2023

Today, we’re publishing our first quarter reports for 2023, including the Community Standards Enforcement Report, Oversight Board Quarterly Update, Transparency Report for the second half of 2022 (Intellectual Property, Government Requests)  and Widely Viewed Content Report. These quantitative reports support our qualitative security reports, including the Adversarial Threat Report released earlier this month. All of these reports are available in our Transparency Center. 

Our report highlights include:

The Community Standards Enforcement Report

Today marks five years since we published our first Community Standards Enforcement Report, and we’ve improved  our reporting based on our learnings and the feedback we’ve received over the years. For example, we’ve added more metrics like data for appeals and restores as well as data for more policy areas over time. We expect these reports to keep evolving as the entire industry inevitably shifts its focus towards regulatory compliance. 

The Oversight Board Quarterly Update

The Oversight Board has been a valuable source of external perspective and accountability for Meta for over two years — and they continued to provide significant impact in the first quarter of 2023. We are committed to implementing all of the board’s content decisions and have already implemented — or are exploring the feasibility of implementing — 78% of their additional recommendations to date. The board’s recommendations have not only helped ensure our policies are fair and aligned with our values, but they’ve also strengthened how we enforce our content policies at scale and improved enforcement transparency for users. 

Last year, the board accepted our request for a Policy Advisory Opinion (PAO) on our COVID-19 misinformation policies and issued its decision this quarter. They found that the removal of COVID-19 misinformation that is “likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm” during a global public health emergency aligns with Meta’s values and human rights responsibilities. We are also reviewing the board’s recommendations and will respond publicly within 60 days of their decision.

In the first quarter of 2023, we also:

• Responded to the board’s recommendations on our cross-check program, committing to implement nearly all of them partially or fully. 
• Asked for guidance on how we treat the word “shaheed” when used to refer to an individual designated under Meta’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, which comes with global challenges and nuances across regions and markets. 

In last quarter’s update, we noted that the Oversight Board laid the groundwork for changes to its charter and bylaws which were expected to empower them to review more cases more efficiently. As a result, two new types of cases — expedited review decisions and summary decisions — are expected to be introduced in Q2 2023. While we did not see a material increase in case reviews and decisions during the first quarter of this year compared to previous quarters, we hope that the board will significantly increase its output next quarter and beyond. 

Security Reports: Protecting People and Businesses

We detected and took action against malware campaigns targeting people and businesses online, shared our findings with other technology companies and rolled out new security features to help protect people. We also took action against nine separate adversarial networks around the world for engaging in covert influence operations and cyber espionage and shared our threat insights with industry peers, researchers and governments.

The Transparency Report

Our latest Transparency Report marks 10 years since we started reporting the requests we received from governments for user data. This report provides visibility into the types of data governments request from Meta and the proactive efforts we’ve taken to protect intellectual property. 

During the second half of 2022, global government requests for user data increased 0.8% from 237,414 to 239,388. The US continues to submit the largest number of requests of that total volume, followed by India, Germany, Brazil, France and the UK.

We are committed to helping businesses and people protect their intellectual property rights. Our IP Report outlines that in the second half of 2022, we took down:

• 4,453,696 pieces of content based on 2,764,215 copyright reports 
• 593,179 pieces of content based on 1,047,326 trademark reports
• 1,712,384 pieces of content based on 180,029 counterfeit reports 

The Widely Viewed Content Report

The Widely Viewed Content Report (WVCR) provides a quarterly overview of the posts, Pages, links and domains that are seen by the most people on Feed in the US. Insights from the WCVR have helped inform how we update our existing policies and products, as well as develop new ones to remove and reduce objectionable content that may violate our policies.

Updates on Brand Suitability

In March, we announced that Meta’s new AI-powered inventory filters for Facebook and Instagram Feeds began rolling out to advertisers in English- and Spanish-speaking markets. Additionally, we shared that our third-party verification solution for Facebook Feed is now available through Zefr. Later this year, we’ll expand these controls to support additional languages and make them available to advertisers in more countries. We’ll also start testing them on additional placements including Reels, Stories, Video Feeds and other surfaces across Facebook and Instagram as we learn more about advertiser preferences to improve and enhance this technology.

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