Today, July 1, 2025, the Oversight Board selected a case bundle appealed by a Facebook user regarding four posts in Somali published to a Facebook page that describes itself as belonging to freelance journalism.
All four posts discuss politics in Somaliland, which declared its independence from Somalia in 1991 but is not recognized by any country. Two of the posts are about Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdillahi's recent foreign policy engagements, including photos of a foreign trip with captions stating that media coverage was prohibited. Two other posts relate to a public, official ceremony in Somaliland and a political conference, with descriptive captions.
Upon initial review, Meta took down this content and unpublished the Facebook page for violating our policy on Hateful Conduct, as laid out in the Community Standards. However, upon additional review, we determined we removed this content in error, reinstated the posts, and re-published the page.
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.
We welcome the Oversight Board's decision on this case bundle. The Board has overturned Meta’s original decisions to remove the Facebook page and the four posts. Meta previously reinstated all of this content so no additional action will be taken.
When it is technically and operationally possible to do so, we will also take action on content that is identical and in the same context as this case. For more information, please see our Newsroom post about how we implement the Board's decisions.
After conducting a review of the recommendations provided by the Board, we will update this post with initial responses to those recommendations.