Posts Sharing Speeches in Syrian Conflict

UPDATED DEC 2, 2025
Today, May 13, 2025, the Oversight Board selected a case bundle appealed by Facebook users regarding two pieces of content related to Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group designated as a terrorist organization by the UN Security Council.
The first piece of content concerns an image posted by an administrator of a public page. The image contains a photograph of Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of HTS who later became Syria's interim president, and Arabic text appearing to be an excerpt from a speech he gave that day. In the speech, he congratulated revolutionary soldiers, praised them for releasing prisoners, and encouraged them to continue fighting to liberate Syria, including a statement urging them to "not waste a single bullet except in the chests of your enemy, for Damascus awaits you."
The second piece of content concerns a short video in Arabic posted by a user who self-identified as a journalist. The video shows a speech by Abu Zubair al-Shami, an HTS commander dressed in military fatigues and wearing a face covering. The speech quotes the Quran, cites crimes committed by the Assad regime, celebrates the revolution, and includes a direct statement to Assad's forces that "you have no choice but to be killed, flee or defect."
Meta took down both pieces of content for violating our Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy, which prohibits glorification, support, or representation of terrorist organizations, including those designated by the U.S. government as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) or Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT). Meta later determined that both posts also violated our Violence and Incitement policy, which prohibits threatening or calling for violence that could lead to death.
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.
Read the board’s case selection summary
Case decision
We welcome the Oversight Board's decision on this case. The Board overturned Meta's decision to remove both pieces of content from Facebook.
Meta will comply with the Board's decision within 7 days and reinstate both pieces of content under the newsworthiness allowance.
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.
Recommendations
Recommendation 1 (Assessing Feasibility)
To ensure people can access critical information during crises and armed conflicts to help them stay safe, Meta should add a policy lever to the CPP that allows the platform to mitigate information asymmetries its policies may create. This could include policy levers such as: suspending the prohibition on sharing information from designated entities involved in the conflict; suspending strikes or reducing feature limits where content is found violating for unclear intent; providing education to users on how to share information about designated entities in permissible ways. When these policy levers are invoked, the measure must be made public.
The Board will consider this recommendation implemented when Meta shares with the Board both the updated CPP and the resulting criteria for deploying these policy levers in situations of armed conflict.
Our commitment: We will evaluate the feasibility of adding a lever to the Crisis Policy Protocol (CPP) that addresses the Board’s recommendation, which includes potentially adding a lever related to information shared from designated entities.
Considerations: Our internal CPP framework was designed to help us balance having a consistent global content policy response against the need to quickly adapt to changing conditions in the event of a crisis. The development of the CPP involved research and consultations with over 50 global external experts in national security, conflict prevention, hate speech, humanitarian response, and human rights.
We will assess potential levers that we can add in line with the Board’s recommendation related to designated entities under our Dangerous Organizations and Individuals Community Standard.
Meta should study, in consultation with impacted stakeholders, how its prohibition on channeling official communications on behalf of a designated entity under the Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy impacts access to information and protection of civilians against violence in armed conflicts. This study should rely on a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of an adequate representative sample of content that has been affected by the relevant part of the Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy in a selected number of armed conflicts. For example, this can cover a six-month period of relevant content removals from a selected number of conflicts to analyze the trade-offs between content that could have led to harm if it had remained online and the impacts on people’s right to impart and receive information that keeps them better informed in conflict situations.
The Board will consider this recommendation implemented when Meta shares the full study with the Board, including any measures that Meta may take in response to that study.
Our commitment: We are currently conducting consultations with stakeholders and experts as part of broader policy development efforts related to our Dangerous Organizations and Individuals (DOI) policy. As part of these efforts, we are gathering qualitative input on access to information as it relates to designated entities, which may include feedback related to DOI news reporting in a range of contexts including in areas experiencing armed conflict.
Considerations: As part of ongoing policy development efforts, we regularly consult with external stakeholders to gather pertinent information about the potential impact of existing policies and potential policy updates on users around the world. Our Transparency Center page provides details on some of the external organizations we work with. However, while we remain committed to providing space for people to be able to talk about events that happen around the world that impact their lives, families, and communities, our DOI policy also draws a line for what is not allowed on our platforms.
While we do not expect to engage in formal research related to DOI news reporting in conflict areas at this time, we will incorporate this recommendation into ongoing efforts related to DOI policy development more broadly. This includes continuing to gather insights from external stakeholders and considering their feedback in policy development. Given these ongoing efforts, we consider this recommendation implemented in part and will provide no further updates.
Meta should report to the Board about its efforts in the last five years to assess whether and how its Violence and Incitement and Dangerous Organizations and Individuals Community Standards should be modified to account for International Humanitarian Law (IHL) standards, and set out its near-term future plans in this area, consistent with the UNGPs (Principle 12, commentary), which calls on companies to consider IHL standards in their operations.
The Board will consider this recommendation implemented when Meta shares this information with the Board
Our commitment: As with prior reports, we will provide details and examples about how we incorporate human rights, which may include International Humanitarian Law (IHL) standards and the United Nations Guiding Principles, into our policies in our upcoming Human Rights Report.
Considerations: As stated in our Corporate Human Rights Policy, Meta has committed to respect the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which calls for heightened human rights due diligence in times of conflict and for companies to heed IHL standards. In our human rights reporting, we’ve highlighted how our Comprehensive Human Rights Salient Risk Assessment helps us to prioritize among different potential human rights risks during conflict situations (e.g. 2023 Human Rights Report). We have also explained how we consider a number of relevant public international law standards, including IHL, as part of our Community Standards policy updates and enforcement (e.g. 2023 report, pp. 24, pp. 27, pp. 30). Relevant policies include our Violence and Incitement and Dangerous Organizations and Individuals (DOI) Community Standards. For example, our DOI designation processes take into account the extent to which armed groups respect the principle of distinction between combatants and civilians.
We will continue to account for IHL as part of our work and human rights reporting where appropriate.