Facebook’s new oversight board has reversed the social media company’s decisions on removing posts that violated its policies on hate speech and misinformation, among other issues, The Washington Post reports.
“We often found that the community standards as written are incomplete,” Sudhir Krishnaswamy, board member and vice-chancellor of the National Law School of India University, told the Post.
The board, which is made up of 20 journalists, politicians, and judges from multiple different countries, announced its first-ever rulings on Thursday in five cases that span four continents.
“None of these cases had easy answers, and deliberations revealed the enormous complexity of the issues involved,” the board noted in a blog post on Thursday.
In one case, which concerned a French post about hydroxychloroquine being a “cure” for the coronavirus, the board ruled that the social media company’s guidelines about medical misinformation are “inappropriately vague and inconsistent with international human rights standards.”
In another case, the board upheld Facebook’s decision to remove a Russian post that contained a slur against Azerbaijani people, but it overturned a decision to remove a Myanmar post that the board said “might be considered offensive,” but “did not reach the level of hate speech.”
Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president of content policy, wrote in a blog post on Thursday: “We believe that the board included some important suggestions that we will take to heart. Their recommendations will have a lasting impact on how we structure our policies.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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