Facebook and Instagram are unavailable for some users in US, Europe and South America

According to third-party site Down Detector’s outage map, Facebook is said to be undergoing an unusual blackout which is making the popular social platform site along with Facebook Messenger and Instagram inaccessible to users across the United States as well as some parts of Europe and South America.

Facebook has officially acknowledged the issue on its social media networks (twitter is your best reliable source due to the outage), and the company’s support dashboard notes that it’s working to fix the issue.

We know some people are having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

— Facebook (@facebook) November 20, 2018

Yesterday’s blackout marks the second major downtime event for Facebook this month, following a shorter outage for about a half-hour on November 12th, which the company commented to USA Today was caused by a “routine test”.

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Facebook partner with French regulators to monitor their content moderation processes

French President Emmanuel Macron earlier yesterday announced that regulators from France will now be allowed to study Facebook and its attempts to moderate hate speech on its platform, which will give French officials legitimate access into how the company deals with offensive content.

French regulators will have access in 2019 to Facebook’s content policies and how Facebook removes posts that may discriminate against or focus on a majority set of people or others based on gender, or religion.t

According to a statement from Facebook’s vice president for global affairs and communications Nick Clegg yesterday, “It is in that context significant and welcome that the French government and Facebook are going to announce a new initiative.” “That model of co-regulation of the public tech sector is absolutely key.”

Facebook has made many new hires in 2017 to impose moderation rules more consistent with the existing internal rules that disallow hateful speech on their platforms. With Facebook’s investment in artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, it will help the company to remove offensive content before publishing it. These are processes that the French regulators would be looking into.

This will be the second attempt for the French president Macron in regulating online speech. He makes his first attempt earlier this year when he announced that he would introduce a draft law that would ban fake news online. If this law is passed, it will allow France’s political parties to bring up complaints online, and gives the judges the ability to call for the posts to be taken down. Other European countries have also make a similar draft law. Germany launched its own law earlier this year to tackle disinformation.

However, The United States is having a more difficult time in implementing the regulation over content moderation than its European counterparts. Their First Amendment generally protests hate speech. Lawmakers like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) have been outspoken about platforms taking down what he would call conservation leaning content, and claiming that the platforms are biased against Republican speech.

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Facebook ends the forced arbitration for sexual harassment complaints

Following a similar incident at Google yesterday, Facebook has also stopped to force employees to settle sexual harassment claims in private arbitration. According to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook reportedly made the announcement to employees internally today, and vice president of people Lori Goler told the Journal that it wants to “be part of taking the next step” at “a pivotal moment” in the tech industry.

Facebook also announced an updated policy on dating within the staffs, requiring executives to disclose any romantic relationship with another staff, even if they aren’t overseeing that staff’s work.

Few top tech companies including Uber, Microsoft, and Lyft have dropped forced arbitration clauses from sexual harassment claims. However, Google’s change was particularly exposed because it was made after an estimated 20 percent of employees participated in a mass walkout protest last week. Arbitration was actually one of the protester’s demands, and their negotiations with Google still in process.

According to Lori Goler’s statement with the Journals, she said sexual harassment has been discussed widely within Facebook, but she apparently didn’t discuss any more sweeping changes to company. Facebook published its complete internal harassment policy late 2017, during the first months of the MeToo movement against sexual assault and harassment. But Facebook defended its forced arbitration policy earlier this year, calling the process ‘’official and appropriate.”

Anthony Harrison, corporate media relations director confirmed in a statement that Facebook was making arbitration optional. “We are publishing our updated Workplace Relationships policy today and amending our arbitration agreements to make arbitration a choice rather than a requirement in sexual harassment claims,” he told The Verge. “Sexual harassment is something that we take very seriously, and there is no place for it at Facebook.”

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Mark Zuckerberg rejects the international committee invite to give proof on fake news

The Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has declined another request to answer questions from political leaders outside of the United States, which has made up to five countries to start asking the Facebook Chief to give proof for his action in person.

Zuckerberg was invited on October 31st to give proof before a UK lawmaker committee, with political leaders from Canada co-signing the invitation. This uncommon show of international organization has since been supported by legislators from Australia, Argentina, and Ireland, with these five countries representing some 170 million Facebook users to form an “international grand committee.”

According to the UK MP Damian Collins, who made the original invitation in his role as head of the country’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, he said that the Facebook CEO rejects the invitation request on the 2^nd of November. Collins said in a letter published yesterday that he and his Canadian counterparts were very disappointed with the Facebook unenthusiastic response.

Collins further said in an earlier statement, “Zuckerberg has set himself personal challenge of fixing Facebook this year to prevent its misuse in our democratic process.” “By being unwilling to face questions about his progress doubts about his ability to do so remain.”

Initially, two requests have already been rejected by Zuckerberg to give proof in the UK and have so far only spoken personally to three lawmakers: the US Congress, US Senate, and European Parliament. Facebook later provide reasons for Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal to speak is that “He does not have time to talk to every country’s lawmakers.” Therefore, the international appeal.

The next committee meeting which is set for November 27th will be chaired by Collins, regardless of their action. The goal of the meeting is to examine the spread of fake news and misguided information, with the UK and Canada preparing independent reports on the topic.

Collins and his fellow political leaders repeated their statement in his latest letter for Zuckerberg to attend the meeting. “We say again: the hearing of your proof is now overdue, and urgent… We call on you once again to take up your responsibility to Facebook users, and speak in person to their elected representatives.”

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