Meta

Meta supports digital inclusivity for women through its #SheMeansBusiness programme that helps women-owned enterprises in various countries participate in the digital economy. The company has also integrated several accessibility features into its products to help people with hearing and visual impairments. Additionally, it discloses the number of people with disabilities it employs and supports initiatives to increase accessibility for people with disabilities.

The company contributes to digital skills development through several programmes. Its digital literacy programme in partnership with the Poynter Institute for Media Studies teaches elderly people in the US how to better identify misinformation online. Meta follows best practice by sharing a third-party impact assessment of this programme. It also undertakes efforts to help build technical digital skills through the African Masters of Machine Intelligence and its Engineer in Residence programmes.

Meta considers privacy a material topic and publishes a report on government requests it receives for user information every year. It also has a mechanism to report online harms to children on its platforms and partners with other companies in The Tech Coalition to build tools to protect children from online sexual exploitation and abuse. Furthermore, the company has several resources for parents on online child safety education.

Meta demonstrates support for open innovation through its membership in standards bodies, sharing of source code as well as supporting university research on AI. The company also contributes to sustainability research by providing big data sets to universities on climate change opinion research. It follows best practice by reporting the number of women in tech roles at the company. Additionally, it has also started its responsible AI journey by developing a set of five pillars for responsible AI.

There is an opportunity for Meta to support open access to digital technologies for vulnerable groups beyond its investment projects around the world. The company should also report how the economic value it generates is distributed among its stakeholders, as well as the income taxes it pays and its employment in its main markets of operation.

Similar to its practice for its digital literacy programme in partnership with the Poynter Institute, Meta has an opportunity to disclose participation and impact metrics for its other digital skills programmes as well. Further, it can support initiatives to increase school connectivity.

Meta has the opportunity to enhance trust by following best practice and reporting on senior-level oversight of and accountability for cybersecurity. The company can also disclose how it monitors and remedies security incidents and the number of data breaches it experiences. Additionally, the company should adopt a group privacy policy with principles that are applicable to all of its products everywhere. Moreover, while Meta has several initiatives around protecting children online, it should also make a high-level policy commitment to child online safety.

There are opportunities for Meta to enhance its support for the tech start-up ecosystem and to disclose more information on its R&D activities.  

Meta commits to respecting human rights and the ILO core labour rights. It also has a publicly available policy statement that expects its business relationships to commit to respecting the ILO core labour rights. The company plans on conducting a company-wide salient risks analysis in the future and has conducted several standalone human rights impact assessments to inform its mitigation strategies, for example, in the Philippines. Furthermore, the company has a grievance mechanism for workers as well as external stakeholders to raise human rights concerns and complaints.

Meta publicly commits to respecting worker health and safety, and it places health and safety expectations on its business relationships and monitors their performance. However, the company is not explicit in stating that it does not require workers to work more than regular and overtime hours. It also does not disclose the percentage of its workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements. Meta publicly commits to promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment and has time-bound targets on the subject. The company also discloses the proportion of employees in different employee categories by gender and ethnicity. However, it has an opportunity to provide employee breakdowns for more indicators of diversity, such as age group.

Meta has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, but it does not include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its business relationship contracts. The company has a global tax strategy. However, it does not disclose its income tax payments in its individual tax jurisdictions. Furthermore, the company discloses its approach to lobbying and political engagement, but it states that it makes political contributions when permitted by law. Meta only discloses its lobbying expenditures for its US operations.