STOCKHOLM, Oct 17 (Reuters) – Facebook owner Meta’s (META.O) Oversight Board on Thursday invited public comments on immigration-related content that could be harmful to immigrants, sharing two cases where Facebook moderators decided to keep such content on the platform. Meta’s oversight board Strive to assess whether Meta’s decision to only protect refugees, migrants, immigrants, and asylum seekers from the most severe attacks on its social media platforms under its hate speech policy is sufficient.
The board, though funded by Meta, operates independently. After gathering public comments, Meta’s oversight board Strive to provide non-binding policy recommendations to Meta.
One of the cases involved a post by a Polish far-right coalition party that used a derogatory term for Black people, viewed over 150,000 times and reported 15 times for hate speech. Despite this, Meta left it up following a human review.
The second case was a German post featuring offensive content about immigrants, which Meta also chose to leave up after human review. Meta’s oversight board Strive to determine if these decisions were adequate and whether the company should do more in regulating harmful content.
“These cases from Germany and Poland will help us determine whether Meta should be doing more and whether it is doing enough to prioritize this critical issue,” said board co-chair and former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt.
