p 13/3/24, 13:44 Board | Independent Judgment. Transparency. Legitimacy. ,Oversight g j p p g conflict situations indicates a presumption against disclosure of images identifying prisoners of war, and that even where there is a compelling public interest, efforts should still be taken to safeguard detainees’ dignity. Social media companies preserving content depicting grave human rights violations or atrocity crimes, such as those crimes specified under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, including against prisoners of war, is important. Public comments highlighted the need for greater clarity from Meta on its practices in this area, especially for cooperation with international mechanisms (see: PC-11128 from Trial International, PC-11136 from Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict, Ruhr University, Bochum, and PC-11140 from Syria Justice and Accountability Centre). They underlined that keeping such content up is important to identify not only the perpetrators, but also the victims (see e.g., PC-11133 from Center for International and Comparative Law, PC-11139 from Digital Security Lab Ukraine, and PC-11145 from Protection of Rights Without Borders NGO). In the Board’s view, this content, properly assessed in its particular context, not only informed the public but contributed to the pressure on the detaining power in real time to protect the rights of the detainees. In accordance with the Geneva Convention III, the ICRC facilitates the exchange of correspondence between the prisoners of war and their family members to “prevent missing cases and maintain family links without compromising the dignity or safety of the prisoners of war.” The decision to apply a warning screen to the content was necessary and proportionate, showing respect for the rights of the prisoners and their families, who could experience mental anguish as a result of being involuntarily exposed to such content. Similar to the Board’s “video after Nigeria church attack” decision, the content in this case included a video that showed deceased bodies and injured people at close range, with their faces visible, and audio of prisoners of war experiencing severe discomfort while being verbally abused by their captors. The case content contrasts with the content in the “Russian poem” case, which also concerned a conflict situation, where the Board decided the content should not have been placed behind a “marked as disturbing” screen. That case content was a still image of a body lying on the ground at long range, where the face of the victim was not visible. The Board concluded that “the photographic image lacked clear visual indicators of violence, as described in Meta’s internal guidelines to content moderators, which would justify the use of the warning screen.” In this case, while the warning screen would likely have reduced the reach of the content and therefore its impact on public discourse, providing users with the choice of whether to see disturbing https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/FB-YLRV35WD/ 23/26