13/3/24, 13:44
Oversight Board | Independent Judgment. Transparency. Legitimacy.
benefits of raising awareness of violence against prisoners of war against the potential harm
caused by revealing their identity. The insights provided at this meeting were valuable, and the
Board extends its appreciation to all participants.
8. Oversight Board analysis
The Board analyzed Meta's content policies, human rights responsibilities and values to
determine whether this content should be kept up with a warning screen. The Board also
assessed the implications of this case for Meta’s broader approach to content governance,
particularly in conflict and crisis situations.
The Board selected this case as an opportunity to assess Meta’s policies and practices in
moderating content that depicts identifiable prisoners of war. Additionally, the case allows the
Board to examine Meta’s compliance with its human rights responsibilities in crisis and conflict
situations generally.
8.1 Compliance with Meta’s content policies
The Board finds that while the content violates the Coordinating Harm and Promoting Crime
Community Standard, Meta correctly applied the newsworthiness allowance to allow the content
to remain on Facebook, and the contents of the video required a “mark as disturbing” warning
screen under the Violent and Graphic Content Community Standard.
I. Content rules
Coordinating Harm and Promoting Crime
The Board finds that the content in this case exposed the identity of prisoners of war, through
imagery in the video that showed the faces of detained Armenian soldiers. It therefore clearly
violated the rule prohibiting such content in the Coordinating Harm and Promoting Crime
Community Standard.
Acknowledging that this rule requires additional information and/or context to enforce, the
Board agrees with Meta that the soldiers’ uniforms indicated that the individuals with their faces
visible were members of the Armenian armed forces. The context of the war indicated that these
https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/FB-YLRV35WD/
15/26
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