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2024-041-FB-UA
Today, July 16, 2024, the Oversight Board selected a case appealed by a Facebook user regarding a video from Nigeria that shows two men who appear to have been beaten and detained for allegedly having sex with one another. In the video, the community is interrogating the men, one of whom identifies himself by name and says he was beaten because he was having sex with a man. The user who posted this video added a caption in English saying that both men were caught having sex and are married. The user’s account is located in a country in which same-sex relationships are criminalized.
Upon initial review, Meta left this content up. However, upon further review, we determined the content did in fact violate our policy on Coordinating Harm and Promoting Crime as laid out in the Facebook Community Standards, and was left up in error. We therefore removed the content.
Under our Coordinating Harm and Promoting Crime policy, Meta prohibits content “outing” individuals by exposing the identity or locations affiliated with anyone who is alleged to be a member of an outing-risk group in order to prevent and disrupt offline harm. More specifically, we prohibit outing that is involuntary, meaning we allow people to declare themselves to be a member of an outing-risk group in the interest of protecting voice. In this case, however, we determined that this admission was involuntary given the fact that both men are injured and speaking while being detained.
We will implement the Board’s decision once it has finished deliberating, and will update this post accordingly. Please see the Board's website for the decision when they issue it.
Case decision
We welcome the Oversight Board’s decision today, October 15, 2024, on this case. The Board overturned Meta’s original decision to leave up the content on Facebook. Meta previously removed this content.
After conducting a review of the recommendations provided by the Board, we will update this post with initial responses to those recommendations.
