1/3/24, 12:49 AM Oversight Board | Independent judgement. Transparency. Legitimacy. civil unrest, but also applies to contexts in which citizens are under continuing threat of retaliatory violence from their governments. In this case, given the severity of the violation, Hun Sen's history of committing human rights violations and intimidating political opponents, and his strategic use of social media to amplify such threats, the Board calls on Meta to immediately suspend Hun Sen's Facebook Page and Instagram account for six months. The Oversight Board's decision The Oversight Board overturns Meta's decision to leave up the content, requiring the post to be removed. The Board recommends that Meta: Immediately suspend the official Facebook Page and Instagram account of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen for a period of six months under Meta's policy on restricting accounts of public figures during civil unrest. The Board will consider this recommendation implemented when Meta suspends the accounts and publicly announces that it has done so. Clarify that its policy for restricting accounts of public figures applies to contexts in which citizens are under continuing threat of retaliatory violence from their governments. The policy should make it clear that it is not restricted solely to single incidents of civil unrest or violence and that it applies where political expression is pre-emptively suppressed or responded to with violence or threats of violence from the state. Update its newsworthiness allowance policy to state that content that directly incites violence is not eligible for a newsworthiness allowance, subject to existing policy exceptions. Update its review prioritisation systems to ensure that content from heads of state and senior members of government that potentially violated the Violence and Incitement policy is consistently prioritised for immediate human review. Implement product and/or operational guideline changes that allow more accurate review of long-form video (e.g. use of algorithms for predicting the timestamp of violation, ensuring proportional review time with length of the video, allowing videos to run 1.5 times or 2 times faster). Publicly reveal the extent of the action and the reasoning behind its decision for the case of Prime Minister Hun Sen, and in all account-level actions against heads of state and senior members of government. * 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 decision to leave a video on Facebook by granting a newsworthiness allowance to content in which Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen threatened his political opponents with violence. Meta referred this case to the Board because it raises difficult questions about balancing the need to allow people to hear from their political leaders with the need to prevent those leaders from using the platform to threaten their opponents with violence or intimidate others from becoming politically engaged. The Board finds that Hun Sen's remarks violated the Violence and Incitement Community Standard. It also finds that Meta's decision that the content was sufficiently newsworthy to leave it on the platform despite that violation was incorrect. The Board concludes that the content should be removed from the platform. Further, given the severity of the violation, the political context in Cambodia, the government's history of human rights violations, Hun Sen's history of inciting violence against his opponents and his strategic use of social media to amplify such threats, the Board holds that Meta should immediately suspend Hun Sen's official Facebook Page and Instagram account for six months. 2. Case description and background On 9 January 2023, a live video was streamed on the official Facebook Page of Cambodia's Prime Minister, Hun Sen. The video shows a one hour 41-minute speech delivered by Hun Sen in Khmer – Cambodia's official language – during a ceremony marking the opening of a national road expansion project in Kampong Cham. In the speech, he responds to allegations that his ruling Cambodia People's Party (CPP) stole votes during the country's local elections in 2022 He calls on his political opponents who made the allegations to choose between the "legal system" and "a https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/FB-6OKJPNS3/ 3/14