9/7/24, 14:07 Violence against women | Consejo asesor de contenido enjoys special protection, as the restriction of such speech can hinder the eradication of violence against women.” As social media is an important pathway to raise awareness about intimate partner violence and women's rights, and in alignment with its company values, the Board believes Meta should take a similar approach. Where restrictions on expression are imposed by a state, they must meet the requirements of legality, legitimate aim, and necessity and proportionality (Article 19, para. 3, ICCPR). These requirements are often referred to as the “three-part test.” The Board uses this framework to interpret Meta’s voluntary human rights commitments, both in relation to the individual content decision under review and what this says about Meta’s broader approach to content governance. As the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression has stated, although "companies do not have the obligations of Governments, their impact is of a sort that requires them to assess the same kind of questions about protecting their users' right to freedom of expression" ( A/74/486, para. 41). I. Legality (clarity and accessibility of the rules) The principle of legality requires rules that limit expression to be clear and publicly accessible (General Comment No. 34, at para. 25). Legality standards further require that rules restricting expression “provide sufficient guidance to those charged with their execution to enable them to ascertain what sorts of expression are properly restricted and what sorts are not” ( A/HRC/38/35 at para. 46). People using Meta's platforms should be able to access and understand the rules and content reviewers should have clear guidance on their enforcement. Meta’s approach to enforce its hate speech policy raises serious legality concerns with respect to both rules analyzed by the Board. The Board’s main concern is that Meta states that the Hate Speech policy is “designed to allow room for raising awareness of gender-based violence.” However, neither the public-facing policy nor its internal guideline documents contain clear guidance to ensure that posts like these would not be mistakenly removed. The public-facing policy rationale mentions that someone else’s hate speech can be shared to condemn it or raise awareness, but that does not apply here. The Board agrees that Meta’s policies should permit expression that condemns and raises awareness of gender-based violence, when the content does not create an environment of intimidation or promote offline violence, and recommends that its policies more clearly reflect this. For the Tier 1 hate speech rules around qualification relevant to the first post, Meta’s internal guidelines mean that at-scale moderators would find it almost impossible to reach the correct outcome. Meta relied on a series of contextual cues to determine the first post was non-violating once it was identified by the Board, but these are not included in its internal guidance for https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/ig-h3138h6s/?lang=es 15/21