13/3/24, 13:44 Oversight Board | Independent Judgment. Transparency. Legitimacy. sent to additional teams within Meta for policy and safety review. In this case, Meta’s Global Operations team decided to escalate the content further to Meta’s policy teams for newsworthiness review. Upon review, within two days of the content being posted, Meta issued a newsworthiness allowance, which permits content on Meta’s platforms that might otherwise violate its policies if the public interest in the content outweighs the risk of harm. The newsworthiness allowance can only be applied by specialist teams within Meta after content has been escalated for additional layers of review. As part of escalated review by Meta’s policy teams, a “marked as disturbing” warning screen was applied under the Violent and Graphic Content policy, and the content was added to a Graphic Violence Media Matching Service (MMS) Bank that automatically places a warning screen over the video and identical videos identified on the platform. However, due to a combination of technical and human errors, this failed, and had to be completed manually about one month later. Meta referred this case to the Board, stating that it demonstrates the challenge required “to balance the value of raising awareness of these issues against the potential harm caused by revealing the identity of prisoners of war.” Meta asked the Board to consider whether Meta’s decision to allow the content represents an appropriate balancing of its values of “Safety,” “Dignity,” and “Voice,” and is consistent with international human rights principles. 3. Oversight Board authority and scope The Board has authority to review decisions that Meta submits for review (Charter Article 2, Section 1; Bylaws Article 2, Section 2.1.1). 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). Where Meta commits to act on recommendations, the Board monitors their implementation. https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/FB-YLRV35WD/ 8/26