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Expanding Free Expression Across Cultural and Civic Discourse
AGGIORNATO 28 AGO 2025
In February 2023, Meta consulted the Board on whether to continue removing content using the Arabic term "shaheed" (شهيد) when referencing a designated individual under the Dangerous Organizations and Individuals Community Standard. "Shaheed" is an honorific term with various meanings, including referring to those who die honorably or unexpectedly. In its policy advisory opinion the Board found Meta's approach overly broad, restricting free expression. The Board recommended that Meta should stop presuming that using "shaheed" to reference a designated individual is always violating, but rather that this content should be removed only when accompanied by signals of violence or other policy violations.
What was the impact of Meta’s implementation of this recommendation?
In response to the Board's recommendation, Meta updated its policy to allow people to use the word "shaheed" when their content does not contain signals of violence and does not praise dangerous individuals or organizations, such as terrorists. After the policy change, the Board’s data team used the Meta Content Library data to conduct an independent evaluation of this policy change and its impact on free expression in which they identified an increase of 19.5% in daily posts with more than 50,000 views containing the word “shaheed” across Facebook and Instagram. Read more on the Board’s assessment in their 2024 report.