13/3/24, 13:44 Oversight Board | Independent Judgment. Transparency. Legitimacy. 2. Case description and background In October 2022, a Facebook user posted a video on a page that identifies itself as documenting alleged war crimes committed by Azerbaijan against Armenians in the context of the NagornoKarabakh conflict. This conflict reignited in September 2020 during the 44-day Second Nagorno-Karabakh war, and escalated into fighting in Armenia in September 2022, leaving thousands dead, and hundreds of people missing. In the caption, which is in English and Turkish, the user states that the video depicts Azerbaijani soldiers torturing Armenian prisoners of war. The caption also calls attention to the July 2022 gas deal between the European Union and Azerbaijan to double gas imports from Azerbaijan by 2027 to reduce European reliance on Russian gas. The video begins with a user-inserted age warning that it is only suitable for people over the age of 18, and an English text, which reads “Stop Azerbaijani terror. The world must stop the aggressors.” The video shows soldiers in the process of being detained as prisoners of war. It shows several people who appear to be Azerbaijani soldiers searching through rubble; their faces have been digitally obscured with black squares. They find people in the rubble who are described in the caption as Armenian soldiers; their faces have been left unobscured and are identifiable. Some appear to be injured, others appear to be dead. They pull one soldier from the rubble, who cries out in pain. His face is visible, and he appears injured. The video ends with an unseen person, potentially the person filming, continuously shouting curse words and using abusive language in Russian and Turkish at an injured soldier sitting on the ground, telling him to stand up. The individual attempts to do so. The page the content was posted to has fewer than 1,000 followers. This content has been viewed fewer than 100 times, and received fewer than 10 reactions. It has not been shared, or been reported as violating, by any user. Meta informs the Board it was monitoring the situation as the conflict was ongoing. Meta’s Global Operations team coordinated with Meta’s security team to conduct risk monitoring that involved monitoring of external signals (such as news and social media trends) related to the issue. During the monitoring, the security team found Twitter posts that showed a video of Azerbaijani soldiers torturing Armenian prisoners of war circulating online, and then identified the same video on Facebook in this case. The security team sent the post on Facebook for additional review, a process Meta describes as an “escalation.” When content is escalated, it is https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/FB-YLRV35WD/ 7/26