Today, October 16, 2025, the Oversight Board selected a case bundle appealed by Facebook and Instagram users regarding two pieces of content involving the use of monkey emojis to refer to Black people.
The first piece of content concerns a video posted on Facebook by a user in Brazil. The video features a scene from the movie in which two characters argue about ownership of a monkey. Text overlaying the video names the characters after European football clubs and refers to boys rising to prominence in Brazilian football, potentially implying that Brazilian athletes who are often Black are then recruited to European football clubs. The caption includes only a monkey emoji.
The second piece of content concerns a comment posted on Instagram in response to a video in which the posting user condemns a racist incident in Ireland they witnessed. The posting user described seeing a group of teenagers shouting a racist slur at a Black woman on the street and expressed heartbreak for the victim. The commenting user posted a statement expressing they do not support the posting user’s message and that they are eager for the situation to "blow up," and "to have some glorious fun with all the [monkey emojis] & out in the street."
Upon initial review, Meta left this content up. However, upon further review, we determined the content did in fact violate our policy on Hateful Conduct, as laid out in the Community Standards. We therefore removed the content.
Under our Hateful Conduct policy, Meta prohibits content “targeting a person or group of people …on the basis of their … protected characteristic(s),” including race, ethnicity and national origin, “in written or visual form.” This encompasses “dehumanizing speech in the form of comparisons to or generalizations about … animals in general or specific types of animals that are culturally perceived as inferior.” These comparisons can be shown visually through the use of emojis and discerned by the content’s context.
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.