“medical condition.” The Board asked Meta about the discrepancy in the terms used in the
public-facing policy and the internal guidance. Meta acknowledged the discrepancy and
amended its public facing policy to use the same term used in its internal guidance.
The Board finds the post has multiple plausible interpretations. The woman may be targeted
as a human rights defender or as a target of abuse, or both. The different interpretations are
analyzed further below. Regardless of the interpretation, the gender of the depicted person,
and the gendered nature of the mocking, the policy is violated in this case so long as the
depicted person is identifiable.
II. Enforcement action
The Board is concerned about potential challenges in the enforcement of this Community
Standard. First, the content in this case, which included a photograph of a Syrian activist who
had been physically attacked and was reported multiple times by a Facebook user, was not
reviewed by a human moderator. This may indicate that this type of violation is not prioritized
for review. Second, the Board is concerned that enforcement of the policy, especially when it
requires analyzing an image together with a caption, is challenging for Arabic language
content. As the Board has previously explained, Meta relies on a combination of human
moderators and machine learning tools referred to as classifiers to enforce its Community
Standards. (See Wampum belt, 2021-012-FB-UA). In this case, Meta informed the Board that
the company has a classifier targeting Bullying and Harassment for ‘General Language
Arabic’.
The Board notes that the independent human rights due diligence report published by BSR,
which Meta commissioned in response to the Board’s recommendation in an earlier case,
noted problems in Meta’s enforcement in Arabic. It found the company’s problems in
enforcement may be due to inadequate sensitivity to different dialects of Arabic. The Board is
concerned, based on findings by the independent human rights due diligence report and the
lack of enforcement in this case, that there may be challenges with both the proactive and
reactive paths for effective enforcement of this policy in the region. The lack of transparency
on auditing of the classifiers enforcing this policy is also concerning to the Board.
8.2 Compliance with Meta’s human rights responsibilities
The Board finds that Meta’s initial decision to leave up the post was inconsistent with its