3/10/22, 12:48 Oversight Board | Independent Judgment. Transparency. Legitimacy. Facebook initially concluded that the content was a call to action to support Öcalan and the PKK, which violated the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy. Öcalan co-founded the PKK, which Facebook notes has been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States. Based on this designation of the organization, Facebook added Öcalan to its list of designated dangerous individuals. Under its Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, Facebook removes all content that it deems to support such individuals. After the Board selected this case for review, Facebook evaluated the content against its policies again and found that it developed internal guidance in this area in 2017. In explaining the situation, Facebook stated that it inadvertently failed to transfer this guidance when it switched to a new review system in 2018 and did not share it throughout its policy team. This guidance allows content where the poster is calling for the freedom of a terrorist when the context of the content is shared in a way that advocates for peace or debate of the terrorist’s incarceration. Applying that guidance, Facebook found that the content in this case fell squarely within it and restored the content. 7. Third-party submissions The Board received 12 public comments related to this case. Six came from the United States and Canada, four from Europe, and two from the Middle East and North Africa. The submissions covered themes including the lack of transparency around the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy as well as its inconsistency with international human rights law, and that calls for discussion of solitary confinement do not constitute praise or support. To read public comments submitted for this case, please click here. 8. Oversight Board analysis 8.1 Compliance with Facebook’s content policies The Board found that Facebook’s decision to remove the content was not in line with the company’s Community Standards. The Community Standard on Dangerous Individuals and Organizations did not define what constituted “support” for a designated dangerous https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/IG-I9DP23IB/ 10/21