Facebook’s Associate General Counsel For Civil Rights, Julie Wenah, Reveals The Journey Of …
Julie Wenah, Associate General Counsel for Civil Rights, Facebook
As recently as 2017, 1 in 4 Black Americans reported having experienced some form of online harassment as a result of their race or ethnicity. Since this Pew Research Center survey, many social media platforms have been called out for their lack of oversight and action on behalf of certain online communities, leading to widespread safety concerns, low trust, and tarnished brand identity. Coming from Airbnb where similar issues were presented, civil rights and tech lawyer Julie Wenah, has taken the responsibility of addressing comparable pain points at Facebook.
Accepting the role as Associate General Counsel for Civil Rights, Wenah uses her impressive background and personal expertise to lead a wide-range of teams focusing on the development and impact of the social media giant’s myriad products. Providing guidance on how to responsibly build systems meant to protect the rights of historically marginalized communities, Wenah plays a key role in supporting Facebook’s ongoing efforts to thoughtfully innovate both their platform and industry.
“My primary goal is to help product teams anticipate potential civil rights harms in products and help effectively mitigate those risks,” Wenah noted. I had the pleasure of speaking with the global civil rights, privacy, and product inclusion lawyer shortly before announcing her move to Facebook. Mentioning the role with much enthusiasm, Wenah recognizes the impact of the work she’ll be doing and is enthusiastic about its implications. “I left my former company where we were serving millions, and now at Facebook, I get to serve billions,” she explained of the exponential increase of her reach. After previously working as a legal fellow at NASA, counseling teams studying microbial molecular changes in microgravity, and later with the Obama Administration leading the former President’s manufacturing communities’ agenda, Wenah remains dedicated to connecting people and building community no matter where her career takes her.
On A Mission To Heal The World
Helping to instill civil rights best practices within the company under the leadership of Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Civil Rights, Roy Austin, the proactive and reactive work Wenah does to identify and address civil rights issues at Facebook mirrors that of her past contributions as Community Senior Counsel and Acting Africa Regional Counsel at Airbnb. It was there that Wenah happily worked for nearly 4 years, counseling product teams across continents on understanding varied experiences to realistically create equity, and pushing for an increase in transparency on how the brand handled discriminatory claims. These targeted efforts contributed to the incorporation of some of the the app’s most notable innovations, including its ‘Profile Photo Removal’ feature and Project Lighthouse – a first of its kind privacy-centric method shared with, recognized and revered by the tech industry, helping to eliminate disparities in how BIPOC experience Airbnb’s products.
“My job [is] to make sure that organizations and companies that are building what the future will look like, are as inclusive as possible,” Wenah started. From constructing self-driving cars with inclusive signals meant to keep darker-skinned people safe from fatal accidents due to inherent bias, to making sure people with disabilities in need of screen reader capabilities are considered during the design stage, Wenah has never shied away from her moral obligation to advocate and create for those typically pushed to the margins. As one of few product inclusion lawyers (aka civil-rights-in-tech or in-product lawyer) with a broad industry to engage with, Wenah says her personal mission is centered around healing, a journey she’s been on for decades.
A Way Around A Devastating Disturbance
In her career and personal passions, building with protected classes in mind has always been an ingrained ideal for Wenah. The daughter of Nigerian-American parents, her father was a student and worked at a newspaper company to earn a livable wage in order to support his wife and unborn child. However, as Wenah recounted, this good faith measure would land her father in hot water and her family in limbo.
“This is the job that he did to take care of my mom when she was pregnant with me,” she said. “And because it was a violation of his student visa, [ICE] deported him.” For years, Wenah watched her mother, even when she herself had difficulty dealing with the trauma of the incident, painstakingly manage a stable upbringing for her and her sister while her father helped from afar. Having been discovered in a sweep sent to their house for a different person entirely, her father’s deportation and its devastating effects on her family later helped guide Wenah’s academic choices.
Attending Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, Wenah found herself inspired to hold the school’s first ever Women’s Empowerment Conference. “I’m one of those people who feels like, if I’m in a city for school or work, I have a responsibility to [the] community,” she explained. Upon receiving moving feedback from multiple attendees off the event’s diverse guest list, Wenah knew she’d been transformed into the change agent she is today. “It was at that moment I realized, ‘Wow, you can create something and bring people together and [they] can be healed.’”
When Coloring Inside The Lines No Longer Creates The Perfect Picture
Later enrolling at Texas Southern University to earn her JD and Masters in Public Administration, Wenah was already on the path to fixing what she saw as a flawed system when the petition for her father’s return was granted. “As a child, I was taught to do the right thing,” she began. “If you do the right thing, if you keep your head down, if you work hard, read more, you will advance. I was taught that there was a formulaic way to success and to escape poverty,” Wenah concluded. After two decades of separation and finally reunited, Wenah found that coloring in the lines had worked, taking up a role at the White House with Former First Lady Michelle Obama, hoping to make her father proud. But within months of his arrival, her plans drastically changed.
“While I was working for [Mrs. Obama], I got the call that he was sick,” said Wenah. “I came back home, slept in the hospital with him for a week, and he was diagnosed with stage four cancer.” A self-described mathematician, Wenah says her mind went straight into problem-solving mode. “Graduation is in a month,” she recalled. “I’m going to graduate. I’m going to take the bar exam and I’m going to get a job and I’ll pay for chemo, and he’ll be healed,” said Wenah of her initial thought process. However, after both graduating and taking the bar, on day one of a new role for Mrs. Obama, Wenah received the grave news that her father had lost his battle with cancer.
“My father died before I could even get a paycheck to pay for chemo,” she shared. It was in this moment Wenah learned how going against the status quo could oftentimes lead to better outcomes. “Coloring outside of the lines in that situation would have been not taking a bar, spending time with him, recording him, learning more about my history, speaking more of my native tongue with him,” explained Wenah of what she could’ve done differently in the wake of her father’s diagnosis.
A New Body Of Work
Still grieving her father’s loss, Wenah found herself comforted and inspired by Preparing My Daughter For Rain, author Key Ballah’s collection of poetry. Wenah states the book quickly changed her outlook on purpose and healing, ultimately influencing the work she currently does outside of the executive suite.
“I recognize that all of us are moving in this world with different experiences that make us who we are,” declared Wenah. These experiences, she says, are paramount to figuring out our purpose and leading fulfilled lives that leave the world in a properly functioning state. Founding the creative collective, The Album & The Mixtape, Wenah’s helped thousands tap into their creativity to define their purpose and design their lives according to what they discover. Through community and comprehensive content, Wenah is helping a new generation of dreamers, doers, storytellers, and music lovers transform their lives and the world around them.
Leaving Airbnb for more challenging work after feeling in her gut it was time to go, Wenah credits both her faith and femininity as the greatest guides to her life and career. With the sharing of her story and all she does to support women in tech, the Women In Product Board member asserts that leaders can find power in their vulnerability and hopes to see more women with similar ideals serving in leadership roles in the near future. “Building products that shape our world is not a spectator sport” she asserted. “Frankly, things are better when women are at the table driving, leading, and being part of the development process.”
Today, we are releasing Facebook Graph API v18.0 and Marketing API v18.0. As part of this release, we are highlighting changes below that we believe are relevant to parts of our developer community. These changes include announcements, product updates, and notifications on deprecations that we believe are relevant to your application(s)’ integration with our platform.
For a complete list of all changes and their details, please visit our changelog.
General Updates
Consolidation of Audience Location Status Options for Location Targeting
As previously announced in May 2023, we have consolidated Audience Location Status to our current default option of “People living in or recently in this location” when choosing the type of audience to reach within their Location Targeting selections. This update reflects a consolidation of other previously available options and removal of our “People traveling in this location” option.
We are making this change as part of our ongoing efforts to deliver more value to businesses, simplify our ads system, and streamline our targeting options in order to increase performance efficiency and remove options that have low usage.
This update will apply to new or duplicated campaigns. Existing campaigns created prior to launch will not be entered in this new experience unless they are in draft mode or duplicated.
Add “add_security_recommendation” and “code_expiration_minutes” to WA Message Templates API
Earlier this year, we released WhatsApp’s authentication solution which enabled creating and sending authentication templates with native buttons and preset authentication messages. With the release of Graph API v18, we’re making improvements to the retrieval of authentication templates, making the end-to-end authentication template process easier for BSPs and businesses.
With Graph API v18, BSPs and businesses can have better visibility into preset authentication message template content after creation. Specifically, payloads will return preset content configuration options, in addition to the text used by WhatsApp. This improvement can enable BSPs and businesses to build “edit” UIs for authentication templates that can be constructed on top of the API.
Note that errors may occur when upgrading to Graph API v18 if BSPs or businesses are taking the entire response from the GET request and providing it back to the POST request to update templates. To resolve, the body/header/footer text fields should be dropped before passing back into the API.
Re-launching dev docs and changelogs for creating Call Ads
- Facebook Reels Placement for Call Ads
Meta is releasing the ability to deliver Call Ads through the Facebook Reels platform. Call ads allow users to call businesses in the moment of consideration when they view an ad, and help businesses drive more complex discussions with interested users. This is an opportunity for businesses to advertise with call ads based on peoples’ real-time behavior on Facebook. Under the Ad set Level within Ads Manager, businesses can choose to add “Facebook Reels” Under the Placements section. - Re-Launching Call Ads via API
On September 12, 2023, we’re providing updated guidance on how to create Call Ads via the API. We are introducing documentation solely for Call Ads, so that 3P developers can more easily create Call Ads’ campaigns and know how to view insights about their ongoing call ad campaigns, including call-related metrics. In the future, we also plan to support Call Add-ons via our API platform. Developers should have access to the general permissions necessary to create general ads in order to create Call Ads via the API platform.Please refer to developer documentation for additional information.
Deprecations & Breaking Changes
Graph API changes for user granular permission feature
We are updating two graph API endpoints for WhatsAppBusinessAccount. These endpoints are as follows:
- Retrieve message templates associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
- Retrieve phone numbers associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
With v18, we are rolling out a new feature “user granular permission”. All existing users who are already added to WhatsAppBusinessAccount will be backfilled and will continue to have access (no impact).
The admin has the flexibility to change these permissions. If the admin changes the permission and removes access to view message templates or phone numbers for one of their users, that specific user will start getting an error message saying you do not have permission to view message templates or phone numbers on all versions v18 and older.
Deprecate legacy metrics naming for IG Media and User Insights
Starting on September 12, Instagram will remove duplicative and legacy, insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API in order to share a single source of metrics to our developers.
This new upgrade reduces any confusion as well as increases the reliability and quality of our reporting.
After 90 days of this launch (i.e. December 11, 2023), we will remove all these duplicative and legacy insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API on all versions in order to be more consistent with the Instagram app.
We appreciate all the feedback that we’ve received from our developer community, and look forward to continuing to work together.
Please review the media insights and user insights developer documentation to learn more.
Deprecate all Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 endpoints
Facebook Wi-Fi was designed to improve the experience of connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots at businesses. It allowed a merchant’s customers to get free Wi-Fi simply by checking in on Facebook. It also allowed merchants to control who could use their Wi-Fi and for how long, and integrated with ads to enable targeting to customers who had used the merchant’s Wi-Fi. This product was deprecated on June 12, 2023. As the partner notice period has ended, all endpoints used by Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 have been deprecated and removed.
API Version Deprecations:
As part of Facebook’s versioning schedule for Graph API and Marketing API, please note the upcoming deprecations:
Graph API
- September 14, 2023: Graph API v11.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 8, 2024: Graph API v12.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- May 28, 2024: Graph API v13.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
Marketing API
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v14.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v15.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 06, 2024: Marketing API v16.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
To avoid disruption to your business, we recommend migrating all calls to the latest API version that launched today.
Facebook Platform SDK
As part of our 2-year deprecation schedule for Platform SDKs, please note the upcoming deprecations and sunsets:
- October 2023: Facebook Platform SDK v11.0 or below will be sunset
- February 2024: Facebook Platform SDK v12.0 or below will be sunset
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Before today (August 28, 2023), advertisers could not promote images and/or videos used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API. This process created unwanted friction for our partners and their customers.
After consistently hearing about this pain point from our developer community, we have removed this unwanted friction for advertisers and now allow users to seamlessly promote their image and/or video media used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API as of August 28, 2023.
We appreciate all the feedback received from our developer community, and hope to continue improving your experience.
Please review the developer documentation to learn more.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Launching second release of Facebook Reels API: An enterprise solution for desktop and web publishers
We’re excited to announce that the second release of FB Reels API is now publicly available for third-party developers. FB Reels API enables users of third-party platforms to share Reels directly to public Facebook Pages and the New Pages Experience.
FB Reels API has grown significantly since the first release in September 2022. The new version of the APIs now support custom thumbnails, automatic music tagging, tagging collaborators, longer format of reels and better error handling.
FB Reels API will also support scheduling and draft capability to allow creators to take advantage of tools provided either by Meta or by our partners. Based on the feedback we received from our partners, we’ll now provide additional audio insights via the Audio Recommendations API and reels performance metrics via the Insights API.
Our goal in the next couple of releases is to continue to make it easier for creators to develop quality content by adding features like early copyright detection and A/B testing. We’re also excited to start working on enhanced creation features like Video clipping- so stay tuned to hear more about those features in the future.
Call-to-Action
If you are a developer interested in integrating with the Facebook Reels API, please refer to the Developer Documents for more info.
Not sure if this product is for you? Check out our entire suite of sharing offerings.
Tune in to Product @scale event to learn more about FB Video APIs and hear from some of our customers.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
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