Earlier this year, the Oversight Board announced a review of three cases involving different pieces of content on Facebook that contained the phrase “From the River to the Sea.” EFF submitted to the consultation urging Meta to make individualized moderation decisions on this content rather than a blanket ban as the phrase is a historical call for Palestinian liberation and not an incitement of hatred in violation with Meta’s community standards.
We’re happy to see that the Oversight Board agreed. In last week’s decision, the Board found that the three pieces of examined content did not break Meta’s rules on “Hate Speech, Violence and Incitement or Dangerous Organizations and Individuals.” Instead, use of the phrase “From the River to the Sea” was found to be an expression of solidarity with Palestinians and not an inherent call for violence, exclusion, or glorification of designated terrorist group Hamas.
The Oversight Board decision follows Meta’s original action to keep the content online. In each of the three cases, users appealed to Meta to remove the content but the company’s automated tools dismissed the appeals for human review and kept the content on Facebook. Users subsequently appealed to the Board and called for the content to be removed. The material included a comment that used the hashtag #fromtherivertothesea, a video depicting floating watermelon slices forming the phrases “From the River to the Sea” and “Palestine will be free,” and a reshared post declaring support for the Palestinian people.
As we’ve said many times, content moderation at scale does not work. Nowhere is this truer than on Meta services like Facebook and Instagram where the vast amount of material posted has incentivized the corporation to rely on flawed automated decision-making tools and inadequate human review. But this is a rare occasion where Meta’s original decision to carry the content and the Oversight Board’s subsequent decision supporting this upholds our fundamental right to free speech online.
The tech giant must continue examining content referring to “From the River to the Sea” on an individualized basis, and we continue to call on Meta to recognize its wider responsibilities to the global user base to ensure people are free to express themselves online without biased or undue censorship and discrimination.
