Facebook's Oversight Board today released its first five reviews of Facebook's bans on posts. The cases reviewed overturned four decisions by Zuckerberg's network, upheld one, and made nine new recommendations for Facebook's policies. The decisions are available in full on this website.
Understand the cases
The Committee assessed one of the cases whether Facebook was right to take down a post that contained a hateful insult – something normally allowed if it did not take place in a country in armed conflict. The decision was to keep the post offline.
However, another of the contexts evaluated was a publication in France, struck down for spreading false information about the use of Chloroquine against Covid-19. The court reinstated the publication, claiming that the purchase of the drug in the country is only done with a doctor's prescription and does not encourage going against government policies. It is worth noting that in this case, the policies are wrong, since there is no early treatment for Covid-19, according to the WHO.
The court also restored a publication that contained a quote from the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, under the pretext of violating the Dangerous Personnel Standards. The publication was reinstated because it was used outside of any apologetic context for Nazism.
Another decision was to restore a publication in Myanmar about Arab immigrants “Muslim men have something wrong in their psychology”. The translation of the phrase, according to the Council, was erroneous: a more accurate translation would have said that “these Muslim men have the intention of doing something wrong”.
Fourth case takes place in Brazil
Another of the first decisions of the Facebook Oversight Board was to revoke the ban of a post by a Brazilian user on Instagram. fourth decision It was about a breast cancer awareness post, and was part of last year's Pink October campaign.
The post featured eight photographs that showed the symptoms. The content was automatically removed by Facebook's automated system, which is responsible for the User Policy on Nudity and Sexual Activity. The reason: five of the photos showed exposed and visible female nipples, and the other three showed breasts covered with hands.
As soon as the case was selected, the social network backtracked on its decision, claiming that the takedown was a mistake and that there was therefore no need to pursue the case. Facebook's Oversight Board disagreed. The trial concluded that Facebook and Instagram's policies were in contradiction, since the first social network allowed the publication of nudity in cases of medical awareness, unlike the second, which did not allow it under any circumstances.
Furthermore, the Oversight Committee determined that the decision was insensitive on the part of the social network, as it did not consider the local context of the publication. It is worth remembering that breast cancer is the tumor that killed the most women in Brazil – in 2020 alone there were 66.280 new cases and 17.572 deaths, according to INCA numbers.
Ultimately, the decision was that Facebook should warn users when automatic moderation is in effect and ensure that users have the right to appeal to a human moderator. The bot should be updated so that it no longer exclusively evaluates images without related keywords, and finally, Instagram should make exceptions for this case in its Nudity Policies.
Facebook’s “Supreme Court”?
But what exactly is the Facebook Oversight Board? Nicknamed the Facebook’s “Supreme Court”, it is an independent group created to evaluate the social network's decisions to suspend or maintain a publication - and, if necessary, revoke them. The judgments are based on what the group assesses as the company's values and its determinations, in theory, can even override what Zuckerberg himself thinks or says about a subject.
Since its creation in October last year, the Oversight Committee received more than 150 thousand appeals, and one of them, in fact, is that of ban on Donald Trump. According to the digital court, the criteria for prioritizing cases depend on the potential impact of each decision, since revocations can be used as precedents to evaluate future cases.
Each decision-making process had a panel of five members – one of whom must be native to the region where the case takes place. The committee also needs to have gender representation among the evaluators.
In addition to the decisions, the Committee published nearly 80 public comments on the decisions made. The publications are intended to clarify both the adjudication process and provide insights to users about Community Policies.
Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. Business Insider
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