Gambia v. Facebook: What the Discovery Request Reveals about Facebook’s Content Moderation

The U.N. Special Rapporteur for freedom of expression acknowledged account removal as one tool for moderating problematic content in a 2019 report, alongside other tools: downranking, affixing warnings and labels, promoting counter-messaging, and developing ratings to highlight a person’s use of prohibited content, among others. As we’ve seen in the varying content approaches of Twitter and Facebook on President Trump’s controversial post – “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” – in the context of widespread police brutality across the United States, the content moderation toolbox is larger than commonly thought, and deciding which tools to have, which ones to use, or whether to use one at all is a political choice that social media platforms continue to make.