The Board recommends that Meta immediately suspend Hun Sen’s Facebook page and Instagram account for six months

Hello and welcome to?Across the Board, the Oversight Board's monthly newsletter filled with updates about our cases, decisions, and stakeholder engagement activities.

This month:?we released our?2022 Annual Report , published our first summary decisions and three standard decisions on Armenian prisoners of war, Brazil's 2022 elections, and Cambodia's prime minister; we also announced new cases about posts discussing abortion in the U.S.; our Board Members and staff joined discussions on the future of content moderation with digital rights activists and industry leaders at RightsCon 2023; finally, some interesting reads from us.

Thanks for reading,

The Oversight Board

?? [NEW] We recommended that Meta immediately suspend Hun Sen’s Facebook page and Instagram account for six months

Today, the Oversight Board has overturned Meta’s decision to leave up a Facebook video in which?Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen threatens political opponents with violence.?

The case relates to the prime minister of Cambodia, Hun Sen, whose Facebook page posted?a video in which he addresses his political opponents directly, saying he may “gather CPP (Cambodian People’s Party) people to protest and beat you up,” and “send people to your place and home.” After multiple user reports, Meta determined that the content violated the Violence and Incitement Community Standard but applied a?newsworthiness allowance. This permits otherwise-violating content where the public interest value outweighs the risk of it causing harm.?

The Board found that the video included unequivocal statements of intent to commit violence against Hun Sen’s political opponents, which violate Meta’s rules. It also results in Meta’s platforms contributing to these harms by amplifying the threats and resulting intimidation.

Meta was wrong to apply a newsworthiness allowance,?as the harm caused by allowing the content on the platform outweighs the post’s public interest value.?Given Hun Sen’s reach on social media, allowing this kind of expression helps his threats to spread more broadly.?The Board is also concerned that a political leader’s sustained campaign of harassment and intimidation against independent media and the political opposition can become a factor in a newsworthiness assessment. Such behavior should not be rewarded.

Meta should more heavily weigh press freedom when considering newsworthiness so that the allowance is not applied to government speech in situations where that government has made its own content more newsworthy by limiting free press.?

Given the severity of the violation, Hun Sen’s history of committing human rights violations and intimidating political opponents, and his strategic use of social media to amplify such threats,?the Board calls on Meta to immediately suspend his Facebook page and Instagram account for six months.?

?? Meta should develop a protocol to preserve?graphic conflict-related content?

In a recent decision, the Board has upheld Meta's choice to keep a Facebook post containing?a video featuring identifiable prisoners of war, but with a warning screen. This post is related to a video on Facebook that shows the face of an Armenian prisoner of war, which was uploaded by a page claiming to document alleged war crimes against Armenians by Azerbaijan during the?Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The case raises important questions about Meta's approach to content moderation in conflict situations, where revealing identities and locations of prisoners of war could undermine their dignity or expose them to immediate harm. Concerns regarding human dignity are acute in situations where prisoners are shown in degrading or inhumane circumstances.?

At the same time, such exposure can inform public debate and raise awareness of potential mistreatment, including violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law. It can also build momentum for action that protects rights and ensures accountability.?Meta is in a unique position to assist in the preservation of evidence that may be of relevance in prosecuting international crimes and supporting human rights litigation.

Therefore, the Board recommends that Meta?establish a protocol to preserve and potentially share information with competent authorities. This would aid in investigations and legal processes to address and prosecute atrocious crimes or severe human rights violations.

?? ...and create a framework to assess its election integrity efforts?

Recently, the Board has overturned Meta's decision to keep a?Facebook video up that called for people to "besiege" Brazil's congress following President Lula's election in 2022.?

The case raises questions about the effectiveness of Meta's efforts to maintain election integrity, not only in Brazil's upcoming General Election but also in other locations.?While challenging the integrity of elections is generally considered protected speech, there are situations where widespread claims that aim to undermine elections can incite violence.?In this particular case, the intentions of the speaker, the content of the speech, its reach, and the potential harm in Brazil's political climate all justified the removal of the post.

The Board is deeply worried that despite the civil unrest in Brazil at the time of the content's posting and the widespread proliferation of similar content leading up to the January 8 riots,?Meta's content moderators repeatedly deemed this content as non-violating?and failed to escalate it for further review.

In addition, when the Board asked Meta for information on specific election-related claims on its platforms before, during, and after the Brazilian elections, the company explained that it does not have data on the prevalence of such claims. The content in this case was finally removed more than two weeks later, by which point the violating event it called had already occurred, and only after the Board brought the case to Meta’s attention.?

In response to a question from the Board,?Meta stated that it does not adopt any particular metrics for measuring the success of its election integrity efforts?generally, beyond reporting data on content takedowns, views and click-throughs on election labels.?

The Board believes that Meta should establish a framework to assess the effectiveness of its election integrity efforts and provide public reports on the matter.?This would enable the company to gather relevant data for improving its content moderation system as a whole and determining how to allocate its resources most effectively in election contexts.

?? Stat of the month

In response to one of our recommendations in the "Iran protest slogan " case, Meta allowed the phrase?"marg bar Khamenei"?(which literally translates as “death to [Iran’s supreme leader] Khamenei)?to be shared in the context of Iran’s protests. Since Meta made this change, we found that?Instagram posts using the phrase increased by nearly 30%.

?? We published our first summary decisions

On Tuesday, we issued?three summary decisions?on content involving praise for Amílcar Cabral, dehumanizing speech against a woman and a statement about Peru's ex-president.?

Summary decisions examine content where Meta reversed its initial decision once the Board brought the case to its attention:

1. The first case concerns Meta’s removal of a?post praising anti-colonial leader Amílcar Cabral?for violating its Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy. After the Board brought the case to Meta’s attention, the company determined the removal was incorrect and restored it.
2. In the second case, Meta restored?a post that compared hanging Peru's ex-President Castillo to Mussolini's execution?after initially removing it under its Violence and Incitement policy. Meta determined the removal was incorrect after the Board brought it to its attention.
3. The third case relates to Meta's decision to leave up?a post that attacked an identifiable woman and compared her to a motor vehicle (a "truck")despite violating its rules on Bullying and Harassment. After the Board brought this case to Meta's attention, it removed the post.

In the coming months, we will publish summary decisions on a regular basis. We will also continue to publish standard decisions, which follow the longer format we have traditionally used, as well as our first expedited decisions.

?? Three key highlights from our Q1 2023 Transparency Report

On Tuesday, we released our?quarterly transparency report for Q1 2023. This covers the Board's activities during this period and includes new data demonstrating our impact for the "Iran protest slogan" and "breast cancer symptoms and nudity" cases.

Some key highlights:

• In Q1 2023, we published decisions covering 4 cases, and announced 4 new cases and a new policy advisory opinion on the Arabic term “Shaheed.” We also changed our bylaws to allow for new types of cases, such as expedited and summary decisions.
• Following one of our recommendations, Meta deployed a new health content classifier to improve?breast cancer image detection?on Instagram. From March 21 to April 18, 2023, these changes contributed to an?additional 1,000 posts being sent for human review that would have?previously?been automatically removed.
• At the Board’s request, Meta briefed the Board on the company’s decision-making process behind reinstating former?President Donald Trump’s accounts. The briefing showed that the company did in fact broadly follow our recommendations in this case, however we call on Meta to be more transparent publicly about its decision-making in cases like this moving forward.

As part of our commitment to transparency, we will continue to publish transparency reports on a quarterly basis. These will include new data about the impact of our recommendations on users.

??? The Oversight Board at RightsCon 2023

This month, we made our way to San José, Costa Rica to engage with leading digital rights activists and researchers at?RightsCon 2023 . This annual event is an important moment for the Board to build and strengthen connections and learn from the experts at the intersections of human rights and technology.?

During the week-long event, Board Members?Catalina Botero-Marino,?Nighat Dad, and?Pamela San Martín?participated in sessions covering issues from misinformation and digital citizenship to demystifying tech accountability models to the impact of EU legislation in the Global South. Our teammates?Dia Kayyali?and?Nino Guruli?spoke about the Board’s strategic priority on?crisis and conflict , and the need for policies that reflect risks to physical safety and security, as well as intimidation, exclusion, and silencing. We also hosted a session to hear different perspectives on treating users fairly when it comes to notice and appeals.??

In addition to joining in person, we also hosted an?online session ?that let participants take on the role of Board Members and experience what it’s like to select difficult and significant cases. Board Co-Chair?Evelyn Aswad?underlined the importance of promoting researcher access for rights-respecting content moderation in an?online session ?on addressing mis and disinformation.??

Throughout the event we were inspired by the RightsCon community’s drive and commitment to uphold and respect people’s rights. We’re grateful to the groups and individuals who helped lay the foundations for the Board and continue to share their ideas and expertise with us.?

????Interesting reads?

Some interesting articles and blog posts on technology we have read this month:?

• An Iraqi historian was slain after being labeled a spy on Facebook. Exclusive emails show catastrophic delays in removing threatening posts.?(Business Insider)
• AI moderation is no match for hate speech in Ethiopian languages ?(Rest of the World)
• Transparent content moderation key to responsible political discourse in Malaysia ?(CNA)
• The speech police are coming for social media ?(The Economist)
• Lost in Translation: Large Language Models in Non-English Content Analysis (Center for Democracy and Technology)

Sign up here ?to receive updates from the Oversight Board when we announce new cases and decisions.?