Facebook’s independent oversight board said on Thursday that it “misplaced” instructions on a critical exception to its rules on dangerous individuals and organizations for three years (Jul 8). Facebook’s original removal of an Instagram post urging people to talk about Abdullah Ocalan, a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, was overturned by the board, which was created by the firm to rule on a limited slice of content choices (PKK).
It said that the content should never have been removed, but that after it chose the case, it discovered that a critical portion of Facebook’s internal policies had “inadvertently not transferred” to a new review system in 2018.
To allow discussion on the terms of detention, this directive provided an exception to Facebook’s rules, which ban support or praise of individuals or organizations it deems dangerous.
Facebook has long been scrutinized for what it allows on its platforms, and the board has chastised the company for a lack of transparency in its policies. The board expressed “alarm” that Facebook had lost a key policy exemption for this period, which could have resulted in more posts being removed incorrectly. The guidance, which was not shared with Facebook’s policy team, was created in 2017 in part in response to concerns about Ocalan’s detention conditions, according to the report.
A corporate spokesman declined to comment on how the policy was lost when contacted by Reuters. The board stated that it was investigating how Facebook failed to transmit the guidelines, but that it was not “technically viable” to ascertain how many pieces of content were removed while the guidance was unavailable. Before the board’s decision, Facebook had restored the content. The board has suggested that Facebook publish the findings of its investigation, as well as explanations of any additional policies that have been lost./n
