Facebook’s oversight board overturns some content decisions in first rulings

Facebook Inc.’s independent content-oversight board issued its first five rulings Thursday, overturning four instances where it found the company unfairly infringed upon users’ speech on the platform or misapplied vague rules on content that could cause imminent harm.

Among the board’s decisions were a determination that Facebook’s algorithms were wrong to remove a post about breast cancer identification that featured a woman’s nipple, and a finding that Facebook had been too strict in removing a French user’s post praising hydroxychloroquine, a once widely discussed treatment for Covid-19 that medical authorities have generally found not to be effective.

The group also said Facebook erred in taking down a post from a user in Myanmar with photos of a drowned Syrian Kurd child with text that said Muslims were too focused on insults of the Prophet Muhammad and appeared unconcerned about the treatment of Muslim Uighurs in China. The post also stated that there was something psychologically wrong with Muslim men and “seems to imply the child may have grown up to be an extremist,” the board wrote.