Iran Protests 2022 Photo credit Taymaz Valley/ Flicker https://www.flickr.com/photos/taymazvalley/52430517870/
Facebook must now answer these days to an oversight board run by parent company Meta. The board, aptly named “The Oversight Board,” has used its authority to overturn decisions to delete content posted on Facebook by users made by Facebook execs, including the posting of “Death to Khamenei” in Farsi (in reference to the Iranian ruler) while at the same time banning any comments that praise the riots in Brazil during which supporters of the country’s former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the nation’s Congress, presidential palace and Supreme Court.
The Oversight Board said that it overturned Meta’s original decision to remove a Facebook post protesting the Iranian government, which contains the slogan “marg bar… Khamenei.” This literally translates as “death to Khamenei” but is often used as political rhetoric to mean “down with Khamenei.” The Board has made recommendations to better protect political speech in critical situations, such as that in Iran, where historic, widespread, protests are being violently suppressed. This includes permitting the general use of “marg bar Khamenei” during protests in Iran.
The ruling came after a Facebook moderator, acting in response to a user’s complaint about the post, found that it did violate Meta’s Violence and Incitement Community Standard, removed it, and applied a “strike” and two “feature-limits” to its author’s account. Meta explained that the feature-limits imposed restrictions on creating content and engaging with groups for seven and 30 days respectively. The post’s author appealed to Meta, but the company’s automated systems closed the case without review. They then appealed to the Board.
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The Board said that it found that removing the post “does not align with Meta’s Community Standards, its values, or its human rights responsibilities.”
As for Brazil, a Meta spokesperson also told Reuters that the company had decided, “In advance of the election, we designated Brazil as a temporary high-risk location and have been removing content calling for people to take up arms or forcibly invade Congress, the Presidential palace and other federal buildings.”
“We are also designating this as a violating event, which means we will remove content that supports or praises these actions,” added the Meta spokesman said. “We are actively following the situation and will continue removing content that violates our policies.”
