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2024-027-TH-UA
Today, Thursday May 16, 2024, Oversight Board selected a case appealed by a Threads user regarding a reply to a Threads post. The post and reply contained statements about the failure of Japanese Prime Minister Kishida and his party to declare fundraising revenue.
Upon initial review, Meta took down this content for violating our policy on Violence and Incitement, as laid out in our Instagram Community Guidelines and Facebook Community Standards. However, upon additional review, we determined we removed this content in error and reinstated the post.
We determined the content does not violate our policies for a number of reasons. First, while the content uses the term “die,” read in context, we determined this was actually a political statement using figurative speech rather than a literal threat or call for death. Second, even if the term “die” were read literally, the content would not violate our Bullying and Harassment Policy because calls for death toward adult public figures are only violating under this policy when they purposefully expose the public figure to the call for death. Finally, under our Violence and Incitement Policy, even if the term “die” were read literally, the content would not be violating because we only prohibit calls for death of a high-risk person, such as heads of state, when the content uses the phrase “death to,” which this content did not use. By limiting removals to the content with the phrase “death to,” we aim to allow people to use figurative political speech while also protecting the targets of their anger from real-world danger.
We will implement the board’s decision once it has finished deliberating, and we 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, September 10, 2024, on this case. The Board overturned Meta’s original decision to remove the content from Threads. Meta previously restored the content to Threads.
After conducting a review of the recommendations provided by the Board, we will update this post with initial responses to those recommendations.
Recommendations
Recommendation 1 (Implementing in Part)Meta should update the Violence and Incitement policy to provide a general definition for “high-risk persons” clarifying that high-risk persons encompass people, like political leaders, who may be at higher risk of assassination or other violence and provide illustrative examples.
The Board will consider this implemented when the public-facing language of the violence and incitement policy reflects this proposed change.
Our commitment: Within our ongoing work internally to refine our Violence and Incitement policy, we will clarify our external Community Standards to better illustrate our definition of “high-risk persons”, which we expect will include examples.
Considerations: We align with the Board that we can clarify our approach to removing violent threats addressed at high-risks persons. Our Violence and Incitement policy currently explains that we offer additional protections for a number of people, including high-risks persons, that extend beyond our general protections for everyone. However, we recognize that it may not always be evident who qualifies as a high-risk person.
As detailed in our most recent bi-annual report for the Oversight Board in response to a recommendation from the Iranian Protest Slogan decision, we are in the process of pursuing broader policy development and work to clarify our overall Violence and Incitement policy. This work is still ongoing, but we will update our existing policy with clarifying examples of “high-risk persons” assuming we continue to use this terminology in the same way. Given the complexity and extent of the policy development work, we expect that completing updates will take some time and will continue to report on this progress in future updates.
Recommendation 2 (Assessing Feasibility) Meta should update its internal guidelines to at-scale reviewers about calls for death using the specific phrase “death to” when directed against high-risk persons, this update should allow posts that, in the local context and language, express disdain or disagreement through non-serious and casual ways of threatening violence.
The Board will consider this recommendation implemented when Meta shares relevant data on the reduction of false positives identification of content containing calls for death using the specific phrase “death to” when directed against high-risk persons.
Our commitment: We are in the process of conducting policy development related to “calls for death.” This includes re-examining the policy on “death to” to strike the right balance between threatening speech and non-serious and figurative statements. Additionally, we are exploring refinements to our Violence and Incitement policy overall to enable more nuanced enforcement. Given the complexity and nuances inherent in this kind of speech, we are gathering insights from both external and internal experts before we implement any changes to our existing approach.
Considerations: At this time, our policy development work related to our approach to “calls for death” is ongoing. We are committed to assessing the feasibility of implementing the Board’s timely recommendation to allow posts expressing disdain or disagreement through rhetorical and casual ways of threatening violence based on local context and language. As we noted in our initial responses to the Iranian Protest Decision, we are considering ways to provide operable guidance for our at-scale reviewers to apply this policy, while balancing values of voice and safety.
As we noted in our response to the Board’s recommendation related to figurative speech in the Iranian Women Confronted on the Street decision, we may consider a number of factors to understand the intent behind speech when it is escalated to us. For example, we may consider how users are engaging with the speech, its extent and reach, and any sensitivities surrounding the situation. With these inputs, we may lean towards safety when enforcing our policies at scale. If there are indicators that the speech is political and does not contain credible threats, we may allow that speech on our platforms on escalation. We are reviewing our policy approach to “calls for death” to ensure that we continue to strike the right balance.
We will provide updates in future reports for the board on the status of this policy development.
Recommendation 3 (Implementing Fully) Hyperlink to its Bullying and Harassment definition of public figures in the Violence and Incitement policy, and other relevant Community Standards, where such figures are referenced.
Our commitment: We will update our Violence and Incitement policy with a relevant link to our Bullying and Harassment policy when we mention public figures.
Considerations: As noted above, we are in the process of updating our Violence and Incitement policy more broadly. As part of these updates, we will plan to include relevant links to our Bullying and Harassment policy when we next update our Violence and Incitement Community Standard.
