Avigail Idan (family pic)
Meta/Facebook has apologized – sort of – for censoring posts people made about the atrocities committed by the terrorist group Hamas in the October 7 massacre it enacted on innocent Israeli civilians.
Meta has now acknowledged that it erred in censoring certain posts about the attack. Specifically, an Israeli video that showed the aftermath of the Hamas attack. They were removed because of what the firm said was “graphic” content.
“In reaction to an exceptional surge in violent and graphic content on its platforms after the October 7 attacks, Meta temporarily lowered the confidence thresholds for the automatic classification systems (classifiers) which identify and remove content violating its Violent and Graphic Content, Hate Speech, Violence and Incitement, and Bullying and Harassment policies,” said the company’s Oversight Board.
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The board went on to say that its measures applied to content originating in Israel and Gaza across all languages.
Meta/Facebook delt specifically with the case of Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, where Hamas falsely claimed that the IDF deliberately bombed the facility and that hundreds were killed in the attack. It later emerged that the IDF did not fire on the hospital, the explosion came from explosives placed nearby that were ignited and the number of casualties from the explosion were few.
But none of that matters to Meta/Facebook. The firm decided that an image of dead people should not have been censored just because of its content; even though, the post falsely accused Israel of murder.
Facebook said that this case shows that “insufficient human oversight of automated moderation during crisis response can lead to the incorrect removal of speech that may be of significant public interest.”
Meta also acknowledged that erred by “lowering the removal threshold” following the October 7 attacksfor content related to the Hamas massacre under the company’s Violent and Graphic Content policy.
So, now the world can rest easy knowing that Facebook has finally done the right thing. Everyone can now continue to post all manner of false accusations against Israel and about what did not actually happen in Gaza provided that the pictures they include in such posts are not too graphic.
