9/7/24, 14:07
Violence against women | Consejo asesor de contenido
Meta ultimately found that this post was a qualified behavioral statement and did not violate
Facebook’s Hate Speech policy. While the statement that “men murder, rape and abuse women
mentally and physically - all the time, every day” may be susceptible to different interpretations, the
Board agrees with Meta's ultimate conclusion that the post taken as a whole is not violating. Rather
than being a generalization about all men, or even the majority of men, the principal focus of the
post is to reassure victims of gender-based violence that they are not to blame and encourage them
to speak out. The user refers to the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women
and then provides a helpline number and shares information about local support organizations for
victims of intimate partner violence.
The post discusses that women have little space to speak about these experiences, that victims are
not to blame, and that men perpetrate acts of violence against women. Within this broader
language, the statement that "Men murder, rape and abuse women mentally and physically - all the
time, every day" describes the actions of those men who commit violence against women. In this
context, this statement is also better understood as assurance to other victims of domestic violence
that they are not alone. It is therefore a non-violating qualified statement.
For some Board Members, the global context of violence against women is also relevant to the
analysis, as the content reflects and raises awareness of a broader worldwide societal
phenomenon, further reinforcing that read within the context of the post, the statement was not an
assertion that all men are rapists or murderers. On the other hand, other Board Members do not
believe that such broad and contested sociological considerations such as root cause assessments
or analysis of power differentials should be used to interpret the statement, believing that it could
invite controversial interpretations of what constitutes hate speech. The majority of the Board,
though cognizant of the societal phenomenon of violence against women and the debates around
its root causes, did not rely on them in order to reach its conclusion that the statement was a
"qualified" one.
Some Board Members disagreed with the majority’s interpretation of this post. For these Members,
the user posted a clearly unqualified behavioral statement that men “murder, rape and abuse”
women “all the time, every day.” Instead, they believe the post violates Meta’s hate speech rules.
The Board also finds that the second post does not violate any Meta content policy. The Board finds
that assessing the post as a whole, as Meta did with the first post, shows that this is not an
“expression of contempt” against men, as prohibited by the Hate Speech policy. Meta argues that
the user’s statement that she does not hate all men does not impact the assessment of other parts
of the post. The Board disagrees.
https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/ig-h3138h6s/?lang=es
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