4/10/22, 10:47 Oversight Board | Independent Judgment. Transparency. Legitimacy. Croatian forces reoccupied Knin in a military operation called “Operation Storm.” This was the last major battle of the war. Because some Serbs fled on tractors, references to tractors can be used to humiliate and threaten Serbs. Čavoglave is a village in Croatia near Knin, known as the birthplace of the lead vocalist and songwriter of the Thompson band. This Croatian band became known during the Croatian War of Independence for their anti-Serb song “Bojna Čavoglave,” which remains available online. The song, which was added to the video and has violent imagery, celebrates the retaking of Knin during Operation Storm. The piper who leads the rats out of Knin in the cartoon is identified as the “piper from Čavoglave.” The melody and lyrics that the cartoon rats sing also have specific meanings. The lyrics are from a song called “What is that thing that shines above Dinara,” which commemorates the Serbian past and Momčilo Dujić, a Serbian Orthodox priest who was a leader of Serbian resistance forces during World War II. The page that shared the content has over 50,000 followers. The content was viewed over 380,000 times, shared over 540 times, received over 2,400 reactions, and had over 1,200 comments. The majority of the users who reacted to, commented on, or shared the content have accounts located in Croatia. Among the comments in Croatian were statements translated by Meta as: “Hate is a disease,” and “Are you thinking how much damage you are doing with this and similar stupidities to your Croatian people who live in Serbia?” Users reported the content 397 times, but Meta did not remove the content. Of those who reported the post, 362 users reported it for hate speech. Several users appealed the leave-up decision to the Board. This decision is based on the appeal filed by one of these users, whose account appears to be located in Serbia. The user’s report was automatically rejected by an automatic system. This system resolves reports in cases that have already been examined and considered non-violating by Meta’s human reviewers a certain number of times, so that the same content is not re-reviewed. The content in this case was assessed as non-violating by several human reviewers before the automated decision was triggered. In other words, although the user report that generated this appeal was reviewed by an automatic system, previous reports of the same content had been reviewed by human reviewers, who decided that the content was not violating. After the user who reported the content appealed Meta’s decision to take no action to the Board, an additional human review was conducted on the appeal level and again found that the content did not violate Meta policies. Meta further explained that in total, about 40 “human reviewer decisions (…) assessed the content as non-violating" and that “no human reviewer escalated the content.” Most of these human reviews took place on the appeal level. Meta added that all reviewers that reviewed the content are Croatian speakers. When the Oversight Board included this case in its shortlist sent to Meta to confirm legal eligibility for full review, Meta did not change its assessment of the content, as it sometimes does at that stage. In late January 2022, when the Board designated the case for full review, Meta’s Content Policy team took another look. At that point, Meta determined that the Knin cartoon post did not violate the letter of the Hate Speech policy but violated the spirit of that policy and decided to remove it from Facebook. Meta explained that a “‘spirit of the policy’ decision is made when the policy rationale section of one the Community Standards makes clear that the policy is meant to address a given scenario that the language of the policy itself does not address directly. In those circumstances, we may nonetheless remove the content through a ‘spirit of the policy’ decision.” Later, when drafting its rationale for the Board, Meta changed its mind again, this time concluding that the post violated the letter of the Hate Speech policy, and that all previous reviews were in error. According to Meta, the 397 users who reported the content were only informed about Meta’s initial determinations that the content did not violate Meta’s policies. They were not notified once Meta changed its decision and removed the content. Meta explained that due to “technical and resource limitations” it did not notify users when reported content is initially evaluated as non-violating and left up, and only later evaluated as violating and removed. 3. Oversight Board authority and scope The Board has authority to review Meta’s decision following an appeal from the user who reported content that was then left up (Charter Article 2, Section 1; Bylaws Article 3, Section 1). The Board may uphold or overturn Meta’s decision (Charter Article 3, Section 5), and this decision is binding on the company (Charter Article 4). Meta must also assess the feasibility of applying its decision in respect of identical content with parallel context (Charter Article 4). The Board’s decisions may include policy advisory statements with non-binding recommendations that Meta must respond to (Charter Article 3, Section 4; Article 4). 4. Sources of authority The Oversight Board considered the following sources of authority: https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/FB-JRQ1XP2M 4/11