November 5, 2021
| Mark Zuckerberg
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Facebook Inc. 1 Hacker Way Menlo Park, CA 94025 |
Facebook Board of Directors
Facebook Inc. 1602 Willow Road Menlo Park, CA 94025 |
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg and Facebook Board of Directors,
On behalf of the Spanish Language Disinformation Coalition (SLDC), which is led by the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC), we request an on the record meeting with Mr. Zuckerberg personally regarding non-English and Spanish-language disinformation on your platform. The SLDC is made up of several non-profit and civil rights organizations fighting to ensure adequate and proportional content moderation to cease Spanish-language disinformation on social media platforms.
We request this meeting in the wake of the Wall Street Journal Report about Facebook and testimony by former Facebook Product Manager, Frances Haugen, in the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security. Ms. Haugen testified that Facebook’s internal documents “showed a consistent pattern of under investment in languages that are not English.” These revelations directly affect the work and efforts of coalitions such as the SLDC, that have been sounding the alarm on this issue and the direct impact this neglect has caused to Spanish and other non-English communities across the U.S.
Facebook's track record on content moderation in general is inadequate, including in English. However, for non-English content, content moderation is much worse. Each of our coalition members have seen how while some harmful English content that goes against Facebook’s community guidelines is removed, identical non-English and Spanish content is overlooked, and allowed to thrive on the platform. Facebook must provide equitable content moderation to non-English and Spanish content.
For these reasons we request an on the record meeting with Mr. Zuckerberg personally to discuss these alarming revelations, and to address means to rectify this oversight which continues to harm the Latinx community. To schedule a meeting, contact Georgina Zamora at castilloassistant@nhmc.org or (626) 792-6462. Thank you in advance for your attention to this request.
Sincerely,
EquisLabs
Fundamedios Inc.
Free Press
Global Project Against Hate
National Hispanic Media Coalition
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)
MediaJustice
New Currents Collective
UltraViolet
United We Dream
