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Facebook has launched a third counterspeech initiative in Europe, partnering with the not-for-profit Institute for Strategic Dialogue<\/a>\u00a0for the launch of the\u00a0Online Civil Courage Initiative (OCCI), which is aimed at tackling online extremism and hate speech.<\/p>\n COO Sheryl Sandberg launched the initiative in London this morning along with Sasha Havlicek, CEO of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and with the UK founding partners for the initiative who are:<\/p>\n The OCCI will commit financial and marketing support to UK NGOs working to counter online extremism, including the four listed above.<\/p>\n Facebook said the aim is to bring together experts to develop best practice and tools for people to engage in counter speech.<\/p>\n The move follows similar initiatives launched by the company in Germany in January 2016 and in France in March 2017. At the initial launch in Germany Facebook pledged more than \u20ac1 million in funding for NGOs under the OCCI program.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear if Facebook has since expanded its funding commitment for the program \u2014 we\u2019ve asked and will update this post with any response.<\/p>\n In the UK the OCCI will provide:<\/p>\n Overall, the initiative aims to enable a community of local organisations and activists to \u201cshare campaigns, experiences, advice and challenges\u201d \u2014 using Facebook\u2019s own Groups feature as their networking media.<\/p>\n To date, Facebook says OCCI across Europe has engaged in direct training at OCCI Counterspeech Labs and workshops with more than 100 anti-hate and anti-extremism organisations, reaching some 3.5 million people online via \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 its Facebook<\/span> page<\/a>.<\/p>\n The company has previously talked about how counterspeech training is a part of its strategy to tackle online extremism, noting this in its first Hard Questions<\/a> post \u2014 which focused on what it\u2019s doing to counter terrorism.<\/p>\n Hard Questions is a series of policy discussions the company announced and initiated last week, soliciting feedback from users on a variety of questions and concerns<\/a> \u2014 from countering the spread of extremist content to considering whether social media is generally good for democracy?<\/p>\n And given Facebook\u2019s staggering size \u2014 with the platform now having amassed nearly two billion users globally \u2014 the company has clearly reached a tipping point in terms of realizing it must at very least be seen<\/em> to be acknowledging it has a responsibility to consider the wider impacts of its platform.<\/p>\n The days of Zuckerberg just being able to shrug his shoulders at concerns by claiming Facebook is just a technology platform are well and truly behind it.<\/p>\n Yet it remains to be seen what practical measures and changes to how Facebook does business will flow from this series of grown up public discussions. And cynical voices might say Facebook is seeking to turn criticism of its platform into increased engagement on its platform.<\/p>\n The company has certainly been facing\u00a0increased attacks in recent times, including from politicians<\/a> seeking to scapegoat tech platforms for not doing enough to counter extremism.<\/p>\n And \u2014 more broadly \u2014 for not taking their social responsibilities seriously enough.<\/p>\n A UK parliamentary committee recently<\/a> slammed tech giants including Facebook for taking a laissez-faire attitude to content moderation, for example \u2014 and suggested the government should look at implementing fines for failures on this front. Something it has said it is considering<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in Germany, a legislative proposal that includes fines of up to\u00a0\u20ac50M for social media firms failing to promptly remove illegal hate speech after a complaint has gained government backing<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
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