Reflections on "Meta Human Rights Report: Insights and Actions 2020-2021", 14 July 2022

 

 Meta recently delivered its quite polished "Human Rights Repoirt: Insights and Actions 2020-2021" (Meta Report), which it made available to anyone interested in delving through its 83 pages of polished text and even more polished photos. 

In March of 2021, Meta adopted its Human Rights Policy in which we commit to reporting annually on how we are addressing our human rights impacts, including relevant insights arising from human rights due diligence, and the actions we are taking in response. This is our first annual report, covering our learnings and progress from January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2021. The scope of this report is Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly known as Facebook, Inc.) and our assessment of what we consider to be the company’s salient human rights risks, defined by the scale, scope, irremediable character and likelihood of impact. Our salience assessments are complemented by an additional materiality assessment included in Meta’s 2021 Sustainability Report. This report is inspired by Principle 15 of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights which makes it clear that companies must “know and show” that they respect human rights.

 The reaction from important sectors of the non-governmental community was  not unexpected. It had that rehearsed quality of an opinion merely waiting for the predicate action to occur in order for it to be delivered.  "After the publication of Meta's report, digital rights defenders and the media outlets criticised the company for failing to address key human rights concerns around content moderation, hate speech and misinformation." (here) In this case, though, the tepid response may serve as a window to larger issues in the context of human rights engagements by business within the structures of current expectations. These are not issues of or  critiques about  the way that Meta may have deviated from one form of another of an ideal human rights report, even one adhering to the letter and spirit of the UN Guiding Principles (as they attempted here). Instead they point to a more fundamental set of challenges--semiotic challenges--about the way that human rights  is now performed within chains of global production. 

"Awesome collectibles" Pix Credit here

1. Human Rights Reports as objects. The essence of corporate human rights engagement is bound up in the production of objects.  The object centerpiece is the Human Rights Report along with reports of other kinds. These are understood in their semiotic sense of firstness--they are the thing that is the palpable manifestation of the alpha and omega of the project of human rights. Reports are the objectified ends of the human rights due diligence project--the thing that stands for the memory of what is, was, happened, was done, must be done, and the like. But what is important is the thing itself--the report--for its very "thingness." One values a Human Rights Report because it exists. That value is independent of what lies within its pages. And value exists beyond the realities, histories, which are the objects of its text and images. The Human Rights Report is a valuable object for its heft, for its cover, and as the concretization of ideas that it represents. In this sense, the value of the Human Rights Report is not within its pages; one does not necessarily read these Human Rights Reports. . . . one collects them. The Meta Report is a long essay or small book at 83 pages. It has heft as an object; its weight may indicate its value. This is not uncommon in human approaches  to objects--one values them by the characteristics of the vessel first; and perhaps last. Like a reliquary, it is the container that may be more valuable than the sacred object it is meant to house.

Foot Reliquary of St Blaise; pix credit here

The Human Rights Report as object, then, is itself a sign, but one that requires signification. It must produce a reaction in those who chance upon it, or who have been looking for it, with signals of what it stands for. It signifies an embrace of a particular activity (human rights reporting and perhaps even its substantive compliance, for example). It represents a chronicle of engagement and the proof of the resources lavished on and the good faith of the entity producing it.  It's signification then invites meaning-making: what it means within the meaning expectations of the communities to which it is directed (for other communities it is either a threat or incomprehensible since there is no basis for approaching its signification and as a result, of providing the object with meaning).  Here the object is enough to produce both significance and meaning.  One does not have to take the trouble  open its pages (or scroll down a pdf on one's computer) to understand what is meant ot be conveyed in its many. . . . many. . . pages: concern, compliance, fidelity to community expectations. . . .success, or at least good faith striving. 

Once that rationalizing premise is accepted one is sucked into the lifeworld of the Human Rights Report. And that is where most people start and stop.  One engages with the object as object, and one thus becomes bound within the rules and expectations of its "objectivity"--one does go beyond the object--rather one approaches the object to judge it as against some conception of the perfect object it ought to have been.  And one does that within the logic that produced the object itself.  These are then "inside" jobs the value of which is to protect the sensibilities and lenses through which the analytic exercise is undertaken. And one can almost program a system to write a critique simply by imputing the critical elements of the ideal embraced by a critical community and them measuring the distance between that ideal and what is preferred in the Human Rights Report object.  While is binary is critically important in defining the relationship between large entities producing Human Rights Reports as defensive objects, and human rights collectives seeking to project their vision of perfection within the operational life of the defensive entity, it may be less useful for any other objective.

2. Human Rights Reports as text and image. The Human Rights Report, then, is a reliquary object.  It0's essence, as object, is to contain something greater, and in that containment to become itself greater in the glory of the object contained. "Believers in the miraculous power of relics promoted a sumptuous form of artwork by commissioning resplendent cases to surround the often minuscule fragments. Sometimes the framework would echo the source of the relic (an arm, a foot, a head). In other instances, relics were preserved in containers of more traditional form" (here). The objects of power in the Human Rights Report Reliquary are sacred text and images.  Text and images acquire their sacred character by a connection of the sources of holy power--in this case for Meta in the form of the UN Guiding Principles and along with it, a host of named and unnamed international normative rules and law. Here one notes that one not only collects Human Rights Reports--one situates them (virtually) within a cathedral of reporting museum of reporting. But in the first third of this century it has also become a doorway to other (usually virtual) containers. The hyperlink becomes the thread that connects one container to another.  This aggregation of containers than becomes even grander for the connections. 

Pix Credit here

Nonetheless, the principal content of the vessel are text and pictures--the representation of thoughts, analysis and facts (producing an image of the past, the present, and the future).  They are meant to evoke response as well as to give meaning. They are the objects that reassure, excite, comfort, enrage, enlighten, and describe a meaning universe within which they are situated and within which they situate the reader/viewer. 

The character, and power, of these pictures and text are evident from the first (cover) page of the Human Rights Report. The images are meant to reassure, to show concern, to create feelings of safety, warmth and protection.  The graphics are meant to reassure--to explain, and to guide the reader to appropriate ends. It almost doesn't matter what is depicted--it is the emotive response that is important.  And indeed, from the perspective of the content of the Human Rights Report, the images do appear delightfully random. But to students of visual stimulation, to Nietzsche's prototypical "psychologist"--they are potent objects, the signification of which is meant to reinforce  the undertones of meaning conveyed in the text and info-graphics conveniently provided. 

If the imagery is emotive, the text is not.  If one could sum its direction, that sum would approach zero. The text both is suggestive but also cautious.  It makes statements that it then suggests have precisely little effect. It gives the appearance of certainty and direction and then walks that back in provisos, exceptions, and ambiguity. It is meant to evoke compliance without giving a potential litigant much to draw on for the interposition of a lawsuit. . . anywhere. Text is object and process of mummification. It is the linen that is used to wrap the body of information after the vital organs have been extracted and placed in the ceremonial vessels depicted in the imagery. 

pix credit here

This sentence is typical: "Most of all, we strive for our efforts to make a difference, and for our human rights commitments to be reflected in today’s technologies and in the metaverse to come."  (Meta Report, p. 13).  Read as a whole the sentence evokes strength and a willingness to move forward decisively to further human rights in business operation.  It draws on common catch phrases in English that have become part of the mantra's of the human rights NGO communities. But parsed, the meaning changes.  First, "we strive for our efforts to make a difference." The company strives only. It fulfills its commitment by striving, in the way that would be impossible if one merely strives to pay workers at the end of every pay period.  Striving reduces risk of liability while appearing to convey positive trajectories of action. Second, the striving has an objective, "to make a difference." But that phrase is meaningless, even in context.  How does one measure or value difference?; difference from what? and in comparison to whom? These and other questions reduce the phrase to a textual emoticon.

Beyond that, there are general statements of overarching goals, and a limited number of heroic examples.  Text and image here assume a wholly qualitative character.  But that is what the underlying ideology values--a textual expression of fidelity to the governing ideology and its key texts; statements expressing the way in which such textual declaration of fidelity are them transposed to operational text; and examples of the way that it can work. Text provides another form of imagery.  They describe in very general terms the translation of ideology and principles into goals.  in the process text becomes as emotive as the images that accompany it.  One is invited to infer; and one is managed into a positive state of mind by the detailed histories of triumph. Nonetheless, operational systemic is not very much on display.  It is technical; it is boring; and its precise description can produce a basis for liability. Consider in this light footnote 5 on Meta Report page 24 with respect to HRIA's (human Rights Impact Assessments, especially purchased from 3rd party providers):

05. For more on HRIAs, see Part 02.II of this report. Meta’s reference in this Report to third party diligence assessments cannot be construed as admission, agreement with, or acceptance of any of the findings, conclusions, opinions or viewpoints identified in those assessments, or the methodology that was employed to reach such findings, conclusions, opinions or viewpoints. Likewise, while Meta references steps it has taken, or plans to take, which may correlate to points assessors raised or recommendations they made, these also cannot be deemed an admission, agreement with, or acceptance of any findings, conclusions, opinions or viewpoints.

pic credit here

3. Due Diligence as a performative act. Due diligence is at the center of the human rights performativity of the Meta Report, its bio-politics.  It must be understood, however, that the performance is directed inward, at the self-reflexivity of the performance circling in on itself--and outward, not to operations, but to conformity with what Meta assumes are the requirements of the UN GPs as they relate to diligence in its 2nd Pillar (¶¶16-21). The object appears not so much to embed human rights through a due diligence process, but to use due diligence as a quality control device that minimizes exposure to liability or threats to its products.  That is perfectly sound policy.  But it represents an interesting twist on the use of due diligence in the service of current forms of order in production. That is also perfectly reasonable, but it is in tension with the inference that due diligence is meant to operationalize transformation in the way in which product production and consumption is meant to be structured within the Meta platforms. It is, indeed, the way one can talk revolution as an exogenous variable or object while creating those structures that are meant to reduce its endogenous effects. One uses tools on others, not on oneself.  And Meta is right to approach due diligence in this way.  It is precisely what Meta has been taught by those who presume to guide the operationalization of the UNGP, at least as they are embraced by states.  In some ways, indeed, the Meta report reflects the sensibilities of state National Action Plans--as a tool by which one can express fidelity to international human rights but apply that commitment outward, not inward (see here).

So, what precisely does Meta have to say about human rights due diligence (Meta Report, p. 24)? First, that HRDD reflects the suggestion of the UNGPs (¶17) and that it instructs companies creating regimes of HRDD to prioritize their actions. One can infer from that Meta will strive to adhere to the formal structuring of HRDD, but that it assumes flexibility in its implementation grounded in company specific assessments of priority, and sensitive to the need to avoid actions that produce liability (an intimation discussed above). Second, HRDD is a historically evolving process reflecting Meta's assessment of what pinches most. Third, that the modalities of human rights due diligence can be procured by vendors better able to  provide the service.  The current high end form of this procurement policy are HRIA--a methodological baseline that also evolves as priorities and technology changes.  The most interesting aspect of that, of course, is that human rights is disaggregated from other parts of the production process.  It remains exogenous--an effect that must be prevented, mitigated, and remedies, rather than one that must be embedded as a component in the production of the goods and services that Meta sells. Meta is not wrong--and the NGO community has itself, in part, to blame for the strategic exploitation of this approach.  Having made human rights special, companies cannot be faulted for treating it as special.  And in this case special means something that sits outside of production though with effects on it and its consumption. The resulting interaction, of course, ought to be frustrating to those who wish for embedding but who  cannot grasp the relationship between embedding and the commodification of human rights in the way that labor is commodified. This is a conundrum that merits substantial discussion and reform--but that is hardly to be undertaken on the pages of the Meta Report. 

pix credit here

Third, the exogenous process of HRDD involves the transformation of the stakeholder engagement model into a human rights focus group model.  One can hardly blame Meta.  Focus groups have become central to the politics of liberal democratic states; as consultation has become an important element of Leninist whole process democracy.  Consultation and focus grouping also suggest something more interesting still--the move toward modeling and simulation--to descriptive and predictive analytics as a substitute for or the overlay of real time communication with the entirety of affected communities.  Clearly such a broad stakeholder engagement is impossible--but modelling it is not: and what better way for an American enterprise than through the new technologies of focus groups? And yet there is a tension here between the implications of of a stakeholder approach to due diligence and the substantially qualitative approach to due diligence itself. Moreover, focus groups work both ways: in one sense it is a vehicle for assessing sentiment from the focus community, in another it provides a vehicle for the proper training  and socialization of the community itself by the way that the focus group is used. 

Fourth, HRDD appears to be organized  territoriality.  That is useful, for example, when one must deal with states with quite different legal regimes affecting human rights.  But it also provides a way of disaggregating human rights so that what is important in one place becomes impossible in another--the universality of human rights is lost--except in the rhetorical flourishes of parts of the Meta Report. Fifth, HRDD is also an alert system used to detect potential crises. That is precisely how the system is supposed to work, of course. Yet it does not suggest the sensitivities involved in the construction of such systems based on the devouring and analysis of data. And, indeed, one of the most interesting aspects of the Meta Report is the way that the quantitative measures that must underlie much of the system it speaks to lies beneath the qualitative text of the Meta Report itself. One has very little sense of the quantitative measures used, the systems for data protection and integrity, and the assumptions and use of data analytics.  It is there, to be sure, in part--but one must follow the right hyperlinks. Sixth, transparency and assessment is incorporated in Meta's HRDD.  That is necessary and important to be sure. The machinery for transparency is complicated--and requires substantial investment in technology and in the capacity to use it--beyond the ability to write on someone's "wall" in "Facebook." That no doubt is a future challenge.  More pressing, though, may be the difficulty of penetrating the immense bureaucratic structures built around the projects of monitoring, and assessment--either of substantive assessment within the operation of the operations of the company, or assessment of the ways in which those processes function. As a result--both assessment and accountability--internal and external--remain an elite project and one  populated by insiders.  It is thus no surprise that the entirely of the HRDD process might be challenged as captured in the sense that a small group of highly networked individuals operating in the same socio-political space seem to be the key or only participants in the process.  

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These are the impression that may be possible as one reads through the Meta Report.  At least those are the impressions the Meta Report made on me.  Others may read the Report differently.  If read like I have, one comes away from the Meta Report visually stimulated ans textually dulled.  One appreciates the extraordinary attention to formal constitution of systems and the veiling of the quantitative measures tat may or ought to be used to drive the system.  The human rights due diligence system conforms to expectation.  It supplies exactly what its outside stakeholders crave--stories.  HRDD within the parameters if qualitative structures of transparency and compliance is ultimately reduced to storytelling; and the spinning of stories is precisely the great task to which the Meta Report is pointed. Not that storytelling is unimportant--quite the opposite: storytelling is the way in which societal structures and self knowledge are built. It is the way that the great movements in social expectations--in its consciousness and valuation of its components and in the construction of its behavior taboos are built--one story at a time. Courts tell stories (discussed here). And the lessons of stories are the building blocks for legitimate exercises of administrative discretion.  That is the essence of a qualitative system built on the exercise of discretionary authority by an agent outside of the processes that are to be examined and judged and against which the authority of the administrator-prosecutor--judge, is to be applied.

One understands that the bedrock of the system is qualitative.  And that qualitative systems rely on the ancient administrative-bureaucratic model of operation.  The Facebook Oversight Board is one such incarnation of that ideology. These entities are constituted to serve as  Chroniclers in the Field of Cultural Production. That such a system relies on the production of large vats of rules which are then administered by a system of external (that is of external to users) officials.  These officials include regulators, investigators, assessors, judges and enforcers. It works the way the modern bureaucratic administrative state operates--but one designed to maximize administrative measures and minimize liability.  That is reassuring but also frustrating.  Operating a platform, and embedding human rights into systems, may not be particularly successful, where it is based on a system that externalizes human rights. But that is a choice that appears to have been embraced by key actors on all sides of the issue.  As a consequence, one can expect HRDD to reflect this externalization.  It follows that the criticisms of the Meta Report are both unremarkable but also inevitable given the guiding principles within which such systems are built.  One is then left with production values--emotive images, careful text, and an object that is meant symbolically to declare fidelity to a project the implementation of which is constrained by its own framework.  One goes back to the human rights report as a ritual vessel--a reliquary for human rights. 

 The Executive Summary follows: