September 26, 2019 Senator Robert Menendez 528 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510 Dear Senator Menendez: Thank you for your letter of September 5 regarding Facebook’s policies around the sale of firearms on the platform. We recognize the wide variety of opinions people hold about guns, and we believe Facebook should be a place where people can have thoughtful, respectful, and informative discussions about difficult issues. We also recognize that there are many legal gun owners and users on Facebook. However, we believe it is important to encourage safety and compliance with common legal restrictions. For that reason, we have specific policies that apply to content about legal, but otherwise regulated goods like firearms, prescription drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. Our Community Standards apply to all content posted on Facebook. Included within those Community Standards is our Regulated Goods policy, which prohibits the purchase, sale, gifting, exchange, and transfer of firearms — including firearm parts, ammunition, or 3D printing files for firearms or firearm parts — between private individuals on Facebook. Firearm stores and online retailers are permitted to promote — on their individual Pages, but not in Marketplace listings or paid-for ads —items available for sale off of our services as long as those retailers comply with all applicable laws and regulations. And users are free to discuss firearms, including, for example, posting content about their legal use of guns or advocating for changes to gun regulation. We believe that this policy strikes an appropriate balance and fosters an environment of free expression, safety, and legal compliance. Our Advertising Policies provide guidance as to what types of ad content are allowed. When advertisers place an order, each ad is reviewed against the Advertising Policies, which are more stringent than our Community Standards governing organic content. Ads must not promote the sale or use of weapons, weapon modification accessories, ammunition, or explosives. Our Commerce Policies apply to products sold through Facebook Marketplace. We apply a stricter set of standards to these listings than we do to other content users share on Facebook and we review this content before it goes live on Facebook. Listings may not promote the buying, selling, or use of weapons, weapon parts, ammunition, or explosives. These policies allow our diverse community to share the things that are important to them and to discuss difficult issues, while also fulfilling our responsibilities to encourage safety and compliance with the law. Striking that balance is not easy, and we strive to do so in a thoughtful and consistent manner. With that context in mind, please find answers to your specific questions below. Address: 575 7th Street NW Suite 700 Washington, DC 20004 1. On average, how many accounts each month does Facebook Marketplace suspend for violating its gun sale policy? We do not have numbers available specifically for Marketplace at this time. However in our most recent Community Standards Enforcement Report, released in May of 2019, we noted that between October 2018 and May 2019 we had taken action on approximately 670,000 pieces of firearm sale content, 69.9% of which we detected proactively. 2. How does Facebook use human beings or artificial intelligence to identify suspicious Marketplace advertisements? Does Facebook need more employees to address the technical shortcomings of artificial intelligence? We have built systems that rely on both technology and human review to detect and remove items and sellers that do not belong on our platform. We rely primarily on automated review, with our teams of reviewers playing a central role in improving and training the automated systems. Our review teams will also review listings. When someone submits a listing on Marketplace, that listing is reviewed against our Commerce Policies.1 Based on the review, the listing can go live, be automatically rejected and never go live, or be sent to review teams for further review. We have an appeals process available for anyone who believes that their listing or access to Marketplace was rejected or removed in error. We are continuously evaluating our policies, as well as investing in and soliciting feedback from relevant internal and external groups to improve our enforcement efforts. We currently have over 30,000 people working on trust and safety across Facebook. With respect to Marketplace, we continue to grow our team, which includes the people responsible for reviewing listings. 3. What measures does Facebook have in place to ensure that, if it suspends an account for violating the gun sale policy, that account's user cannot create another account under a different username? When we become aware of content that violates our policies, we remove that content immediately. With respect to those who repeatedly post content that violates our policies, we might restrict their access to the Marketplace feature or disable their accounts. Once we have taken action against accounts that have violated our policies, we look to stop those who created the accounts from creating new accounts or Pages to engage in the same, violating activity. In order to prevent those intent on breaking our policies from gaming the system, we do not share publicly all the specifics around our enforcement tactics. That said, we recently shared in our enforcement report2 that we have removed and blocked millions of such inauthentic accounts from the platform. The majority of these accounts were caught within minutes of registration, and we’re getting even more efficient at detecting them. 4. What proactive measures is Facebook taking to ensure that users are not able to skirt Facebook's ban on gun sales, including by using coded language and subsequently completing a sale on Facebook Messenger? 1 https://www.facebook.com/policies/commerce 2 https://transparency.facebook.com/community-standards-enforcement Address: 575 7th Street NW Suite 700 Washington, DC 20004 The safety of our community is our foremost priority. That's why we continue to build new tools and to update our existing ones to better detect bad behavior and make Marketplace as safe and reliable a place to buy and sell as possible. We are continuously updating our automated systems and the signals analyzed by human reviewers to catch violating content, including keywords. We review Marketplace listings before they go live, relying on automated review supported and strengthened by our human review teams. We also have models that review live content and flag listings for removal or review. These models are constantly updated based on learnings and action taken from the human reviews. It is important to keep in mind that bad actors intent on breaking our rules will continue to update their tactics--and even the terminology they use--to avoid detection. We continue in our efforts to stay on top of emerging trends in order to find and remove illicit content more quickly. No system is perfect, and we know ours will not catch every violation of our policies, but we're committed to remaining as agile as our adversaries. 5. What policies does Facebook have in place to alert law enforcement to instances of gun trafficking on its platforms? Law enforcement plays a critical role in keeping people safe, and we have a long history of working successfully with them to address a wide variety of threats. When we receive reports or otherwise find content that violates our policies, we remove it. We proactively reach out to law enforcement if we see a credible threat of imminent harm. We disclose account records in accordance with our terms of service and applicable law, and we have developed tools designed to help law enforcement gather evidence in connection with official investigations.3 Our tools for law enforcement allow them to get feedback quickly on their inquiries. 6. How does Facebook handle reports from users alerting it to possible instances of gun sales? On average, how many instances of gun sales do other users flag each month? We encourage our community to report buyers or sellers who aren't acting in good faith; there's a “Report Item” option on every product profile. If you see an item for sale that you believe violates Facebook's Commerce Policies, you can easily report the listing.4 You can also report buyers and sellers if you see activity that you think shouldn’t be on Facebook.5 We also have a help center article for people seeking to report outside of the listing view.6 Our Community Standards Enforcement Report provides details on organic content removed from the platform for violations of our Regulated Goods policies. 3 https://www.facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines/ and https://www.facebook.com/records/login/ 4 https://www.facebook.com/help/196126404168290?helpref=uf_permalink 5 https://www.facebook.com/help/196126404168290?helpref=uf_permalink 6 https://www.facebook.com/help/196126404168290?helpref=uf_permalink Address: 575 7th Street NW Suite 700 Washington, DC 20004 Thank you for the opportunity to answer your questions. I look forward to working with you going forward. Sincerely, Kevin Martin Vice President, U.S. Public Policy CC: Senators Edward J. Markey, Michael F. Bennett, Mazie K. Hirono, Kamala D. Harris, Robert P. Casey, Jr., Richard Blumenthal, Richard J. Durbin, Amy Klobuchar, Sheldon Whitehouse, Chris Murphy, Jack Reed, Cory A. Booker, Chris Van Hollen. Address: 575 7th Street NW Suite 700 Washington, DC 20004