Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to come back to the issue of Australia. Again, I'm concerned about the overreach in the content blocking that happened in Australia and making sure that this does not happen here.
Whistle-blower documents state that Facebook violated its own company policies during the gradual rollout of the takedown on February 17, 2021. Facebook ignored error signals at the 10% mark, 25% mark, 50% mark, as senior executives ordered the full rollout to take effect within hours. Errors would normally have paused the rollout.
One example of a weird thing that happened is that Facebook policies, which you both know very well, require prior content review and cross-checking of lists of sensitive accounts, including accounts of critical online infrastructure, to avoid harmful over-blocking of content. Whistle-blowers reported that “before the Australia takedown, apparently for the first time in its history, Facebook did not develop or utilize lists of sensitive accounts before activating the Australia takedown”, which threatened COVID vaccine rollouts, response to wildfires and more.
In response to other Facebook employees who were trying to fix the over-blocking, an Australian response team member posted acknowledgement that guidance from the policy and legal teams had been found to be overinclusive in blocking.
Ms. Curran, you were very nicely answering my questions earlier. Can you confirm that you will not be over-inclusive in blocking and that you will develop a list of sensitive accounts to avoid over-blocking?