4/10/22, 10:45 Oversight Board | Independent Judgment. Transparency. Legitimacy. Narrow the definition of “praise” in the Known Questions (internal guidance for moderators) by removing the example of content that “seeks to make others think more positively about” dangerous organizations. Revise its Implementation Standards (internal guidance for moderators) to clarify that the reporting allowance in the Dangerous Individuals Organizations policy permits positive statements. The Known Questions should clarify the importance of protecting news reporting in conflict or crisis situations. Assess the accuracy with which reviewers enforce the reporting allowance to the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy to identify the cause of errors. Conduct a review of the HIPO system to examine whether it can more effectively prioritize potential errors in enforcing exceptions to the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy. Increase the capacity allocated to HIPO review across all languages. *Case summaries provide an overview of the case and do not have precedential value. Full case decision 1. Decision summary The Oversight Board overturns Meta's original decision to remove a Facebook post on the page of a popular Urdu language newspaper in India. This post reports an announcement from a prominent member and spokesperson of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan regarding women and girls’ education in Afghanistan. Meta reversed its decision as a result of the Board selecting this case, and reversed sanctions on the administrator’s account. The Board finds that the post does not violate the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations Community Standard because the policy allows “reporting on” designated entities. The Board is concerned by Meta’s broad definition of “praise,” and the lack of clarity to reviewers on how to enforce exceptions to the policy on news reporting of actions taken by designated entities that are exercising control of a country. This interferes with the ability of news outlets to report on the actions and statements of designated entities in situations like this one, where the Taliban regime forcibly removed the recognized government of Afghanistan. The Board finds Meta did not meet its responsibilities to prevent or mitigate errors when enforcing these policy exceptions. The decision recommends that Meta change its policy and enforcement processes on the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations Community Standard. 2. Case description and background In January 2022, the Facebook page of a news outlet based in India shared a text post in Urdu containing a link to an article on its own website. Meta states that the post was viewed about 300 times. The post reported that Zabiullah Mujahid, acting as “Culture and Information Minister” and official central spokesman for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, had announced that schools and colleges for girls and women would open at the start of the Afghan New Year on March 21. The linked article contains a fuller report on the announcement. The news outlet is an Urdu-language newspaper based in Hyderabad, India, a city with a high number of Urdu-speaking residents. It is the largest-circulated Urdu newspaper in the country and claims a daily readership of more than a million people. There are approximately 230 million Urdu-speakers around the world. No state has given formal diplomatic recognition to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan since the group seized power in August 2021. Schools and colleges for girls and women did not open at the start of the Afghan New Year as the spokesperson announced they would, and girls aged 12 and older (from the sixth grade on) and women remain barred from attending school at the time of the Board’s decision in this case. On January 20, 2022, a Facebook user clicked “report post” on the content but did not complete their complaint. This triggered a classifier (a machine learning tool trained to identify breaches of Meta’s Community Standards) that assessed the content as potentially violating the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy and sent it for human review. An Urdu-speaking reviewer determined that the content violated the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy and removed it on the same day it was posted. Meta explained this was because it “praised” a designated organization. The Taliban is a Tier 1 designated terrorist organization under Meta’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy. As a result of the violation, Meta also applied both a severe strike and a standard strike against the page administrator. In general, while content posted to Facebook pages appears to come from the page itself (for example, the news outlet), they are authored by page administrators with personal Facebook accounts. Strikes result in Meta imposing temporary restrictions on users’ ability to perform essential functions on the platform (such as share content), known as “feature-limits,” or disabling of the account. Severe strikes result in stronger penalties. In this case, the strikes meant that a three-day and an additional, longer feature-limit was imposed against the page’s administrator. The former prevented the user from creating new public content and creating or joining Messenger rooms. The latter prevented h i li F b k i d d https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/FB-U2HHA647 d i j i i M Addi i ll h l i lf l 3/12