The Supervisory Board dealing with content moderation on and dealt with the case of two photos that were posted in 2021 and 2022 on the Instagram profile of a couple who identify as transgender and non-binary. Both photographs showed bare chests with covered nipples. The photo captions were about healthcare for transgender people. They indicate that one of the people running the account is to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
Censorship on Instagram. The Supervisory Board reversed Meta’s decision
After numerous reports from the company’s automated systems and users, the photo posts were repeatedly reviewed by moderation for potential violations, and were eventually blocked. The couple running the Instagram profile appealed against this decision to Meta, and then to the board overseeing moderation. Eventually, Meta restored the posts along with the photos and explained that the posts had been deleted in error.
The Board of Trustees clarified in a Tuesday announcement that the removal of these posts was inconsistent with Meta’s community standards, human rights values, or obligations. “These cases also highlight fundamental problems with Meta politics.”
Meta’s internal guidelines for moderators on when to remove content under the ‘sexual solicitation’ policy are much broader than the policy’s stated rationale or publicly available guidelines. This causes confusion among users and moderators and, as noted by Meta, leads to inappropriate content removal
the council emphasized in the communiqué.
Facebook and Instagram will allow pictures with nipples? The Supervisory Board recommended changes
It pointed out that the policy in place is “based on a binary view of gender and the distinction between male and female bodies.” It was assessed that this approach makes it “not clear how the rules apply to intersex, non-binary and transgender people and requires moderation to make quick and subjective gender assessments, which is not practical for large-scale content moderation.”
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The Supervisory Board reversed Meta’s original decision to remove the posts and made its recommendations, which, according to the daily “”, mean that Facebook and Instagram may soon allow the publication of photos without censored nipples. The board’s recommendations indicate that the company should:
- define clear, objective, rights-respecting criteria governing nudity and sexual activities, so that all people are treated in a manner consistent with international human rights standards, without discrimination on the basis of sex. Meta should first conduct a comprehensive human rights impact assessment of such a change, involving various stakeholders, and create a plan to address any damage identified;
- provide more detail in the publicly available sexual solicitation community standards about the criteria that lead to content removal;
- revise the community standards guidelines for moderators on sexual solicitation to more accurately reflect the public policy on this policy. This would help reduce errors on Meta’s part.
The Meta Oversight Board was established in 2020, although the decision to create it was made in 2018. It was appointed by Mark Zuckerberg as a kind of “Supreme Court” (then only on the Facebook platform) dealing primarily with content moderation. Its role is to adjudicate, negotiate and mediate on important Meta policy issues. The board also has the power to overrule company decisions. The council currently consists of 22 members.
Source: Gazeta
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