FACEBOOK, INC. 06-17-20/1:00 p.m. ET Page 1 FACEBOOK, INC. June 17, 2020 1:00 p.m. ET [Note: Transcript corrected for accuracy] Operator: This is Conference # 5877788 Operator: Hello and welcome to Today’s Press Call. There will be prepared remarks and a Q&A to follow. To ask a question after the prepared remarks conclude, please press star one. Now I’d like to turn the call over to Tom Reynolds, who will kick this off. Tom Reynolds: Hey, everybody. Thank you, Operator, and thanks for joining us today. I’m Tom Reynolds from the Facebook Communications Team. As folks may have seen, our CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, had an op-ed last night about the new initiatives relating to our elections work, so we wanted to use this time to offer some additional details on that work, and we also wanted to discuss some new updates relating to our political ads work as well as give a brief overview relating to our ongoing election integrity efforts. We’re going to start with a brief overview of where we are from Nick Clegg, our Head of Communications and Policy, who also has an op-ed out today on our elections related issues. Naomi Gleit, our VP of Products and Social Impact, will then talk to you about our new Voting Information Center and the registration effort that Mark noted in his op-ed. Sarah Schiff who helps lead our ads product work will then talk about a new option to give people more control over the political and issue ads they see on Facebook and on Instagram along with new transparency features that we are rolling out. And finally Nathaniel Gleicher, our Head of Security Policy, will provide an update on our elections integrity work overall. FACEBOOK, INC. 06-17-20/1:00 p.m. ET Page 2 We’re then happy to answer any questions relating to these new elections products and initiatives. And just as a reminder this call is on the record with no embargo. With that, let me turn it over to Nick Clegg to kick us off. Nick Clegg: Yes, thanks, Tom. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. I just wanted to say a few words before we dive in because following a busy news day today, but we meet today in the light of the recent executive order from the President. The reports today about further plans for the administration to reform Section 230, the views and proposal put forward to us at Facebook from the Biden campaign, the calls overnight from a number of civil rights organizations for an ad boycott and I thought in the context of all of those different countervailing demands, suggestions, and pressures on Facebook; it would be worth just reiterating a few fundamental points. First this, we emphatically stand against hate speech. We have the internet’s most advanced system for removing hate speech content from our services and just to illustrate the point, we removed nearly 10 million points in the last quarter alone, and almost all of that – well, 88 percent of that was removed before it was reported to us by people. Of course, we’d like to do better, even better than that. We need to do more. We need to move faster, but we are making significant progress in the right direction. 88 percent removal of – rate of removal before anyone’s reported to us is up from 38 percent just two years ago, so that gives you an idea of the trajectory of progress we are making against the problem of hate speech on our services. And of course, our ability to do that, to moderate content in that way and moderate other forms of content, is enabled by the provisions of Section 230. And changing significantly or eliminating the balance of responsibility and provisions about liability in Section 230 would, in our view, in the end mean less speech of all kinds appearing online. FACEBOOK, INC. 06-17-20/1:00 p.m. ET Page 3 The proposals, or suggestions, the demands made from countervailing sides on how we should balance free speech against the dangers of hate speech or whether to fact-check more or less content, we accept that accountability. We accept that scrutiny. And we accept the responsibilities that we have as a platform on which so much of the political debate not least in the run up to the election plays out in this country. The Trump administration is demanding that we stop or reduce censoring content and that we fact-check less materials. Civil rights groups and the Biden campaign are demanding that we censor and/or fact-check more. Policymakers are just going to have to decide what rules they want for campaigns and for the role of the Internet, and particularly at times of electoral campaigns. We in the meantime, in the absence of those rules, are continuing to take our responsibility seriously and to strike the right balance without sacrificing the safety of our community or the ability of people to express their voice at the polls – which brings me, really, to the subject of our presentation and this press call, which is that to us the voting process is a crucial element of free expression. In the end the best way that people in power can be held to account is for voters to be able to see what is said by politicians, the good, the bad, and the ugly, to make up their own minds to participate fully in the electoral process and to cast their vote. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Naomi Gleit. Naomi Gleit: Thanks, Nick. And thank you all for joining us today. I'm Naomi Gleit and I've been helping to lead the effort to launch our new Voting Information Center. A few weeks ago, Mark wrote about some of the things we can do to make civic engagement as easy as possible for people using our services. At the end of the day, voting is the best way for people to make their voices heard, hold our leaders accountable and address many of the long-term questions about justice that people are asking. FACEBOOK, INC. 06-17-20/1:00 p.m. ET Page 4 And so, today Facebook is launching the most aggressive voter information campaign that we've ever done. We will give millions of people accurate information about voting, especially with some states making changes in response to the pandemic. We've already run several get out the vote efforts to help people exercise their right to vote. We also fight misinformation about voting and attempts at voter suppression. We’ve been helping to register voters for many years. In both 2016 and 2018, we registered an estimated 2 million voters. And with November fast approaching, now is the time to double down on these efforts. Our goal is to help register more than 4 million people using our platforms this year in the U.S. and help them get to the polls. To do that, we're building our new Voting Information Center in the U.S. It will be similar to our COVID-19 Information Center, where people are getting authoritative information about the pandemic. The Voting Information Center is where people can access information about how to register, how to request mail-in ballots, deadlines they need to be aware of, what's on their ballot and much more. The Voting Information Center will also change as the election season progresses. So for example, when there's an upcoming voter registration deadline, the Voting Information Center will prioritize how to check and – register and check if you've already registered. And when it's time to request a mail-in ballot, it will highlight how to do that. When early voting begins, it will connect people with more information from their state election officials, and when nearing Election Day, we’ll help people make a plan, including what to bring with them in the polling site. We’re working closely with secretaries of state, state and local elections boards, and nonpartisan organizations about the types of information that’s relevant to include for everyone from first-time voters, to those who vote in every election. Our plan is to make the Voting Information Center available at the top of people’s Facebook feed, and on Instagram this summer. FACEBOOK, INC. 06-17-20/1:00 p.m. ET Page 5 We’re also working on updates to the existing civic reminders we’ve run in the primaries including registration reminders, vote by mail information, and Election Day reminders. These updates will make it even easier for people to participate and share with their friends across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. From now until Election Day, we expect over 160 million people will see authoritative information about how to vote in the U.S. The last point I want to make relates to combating voter suppression. Voter suppression has no place on Facebook. Our policies ban attempts to directly interfere with a person’s ability to vote, we remove this content whether it’s your neighbor or from a politician. Today, we ban not just misrepresentation about who can vote, qualifications for voting, and methods for voting, but also whether a vote will be counted, and misrepresentation about the materials required to vote. As Mark this week posted, we’re in the middle of reviewing our policies around voter suppression to make sure we’re taking in to account the realities of voting in the midst of a pandemic.