The Board overturns Meta’s original decision to remove the content from Instagram. It finds
that restoring the content to the platform, with a “mark as disturbing” warning screen, is
consistent with Meta’s content policies, values and human-rights responsibilities. However,
the Board also concludes that Meta’s demotion of the restored content, in the form of its
exclusion from the possibility of being recommended, does not accord with the company’s
responsibilities to respect freedom of expression.
6.1 Compliance With Meta’s Content Policies
The Board agrees with Meta that it is difficult to determine whether the video in this case
shows “[v]isible internal organs.” Given the context of this case, where there is exceptionally
high public interest value in protecting access to information and providing avenues for
raising awareness of the impact of the conflict, content that is “on the borderline” of violating
the Violent and Graphic Content policy should not be removed. As the content includes
imagery that shows a person’s violent death, depicting a bloody head injury, Meta should
have applied a warning screen and made it available only to people over the age of 18 in line
with its policies.
The Board also agrees with Meta’s subsequent determination that even if this video had
included visible internal organs, the post’s language condemning or raising awareness of the
violence also means that it should have been left up with a “mark as disturbing” warning
screen, and not be available to users under 18. The Community Standard does not provide for
warning screens in relation to the applicable policy line (“[v]ideos of people or dead bodies in
a medical setting if they depict […] [v]isible internal organs”). In the Sudan Graphic Video
case, the Board explained that Meta instructs reviewers to follow the letter of its “do not post”
policies. The rationale states that “[i]n the context of discussions about important issues
such as human-rights abuses, armed conflicts or acts of terrorism, we allow graphic content
(with some limitations) to help people to condemn and raise awareness about these
situations.” The Community Standard rule, however, prohibits all videos depicting “visible
internal organs” in a non-medical context, without providing reviewers the option of adding a
warning screen where the policy rationale exception is engaged. Meta’s automated systems
do not appear to be configured to apply warning screens to videos depicting graphic content
where there is context condemning or raising awareness of the violence. It is also not clear
that where this context is present, the applicable classifiers would be able to send the content
to human reviewers for further assessment.