MADRID, (Portaltic/EP) – The Meta Content Advisory Council recommended establishing stricter regulations that restrict publications in which gender violence is normalized, praised or justified.
This Council is made up of a large and diverse group of Internet security experts and Meta experts from around the world. Its members offer concrete knowledge, perspectives and statistics to define the approach that Meta wants to promote to protect its users, through the review of moderation cases on both Facebook and Instagram.
One of his latest updates is related to the type of content that is presented on Facebook and in which violence against women is shown and normalized, which is why he recommended that the company “undertake a process of developing policies to address this gap.”
The Advisory Council took as a reference a publication shared through this social network and dated May 2021, which shows a photograph of a woman with visible marks of an attack such as bruises on her face and body.
This image had a caption written in Arabic, in which the woman comments that, after a misunderstanding with her partner, whom she asked for a veil and that he interpreted as a ‘donkey’, because both words maintain a font Similarly, he physically assaulted him.
Along with this clarification, comments were included suggesting that the woman -a Syrian activist whose ‘post’ included a ‘hashtag’ related to supporting women in this country- deserved to have been the victim of that aggression, as well as emoticons of smiling faces and crying with laughter as a gesture of mockery of this action.
The Advisory Council commented that in February 2023 a user reported this content up to three times for violating the Meta community guidelines in terms of violence and hate speech. Despite his insistence, the company did not review the case, so, taking into account that 48 hours after the complaint is filed, the incident is automatically closed, the publication remained on the platform for almost two years, without a moderator reviewing it.
Given the passivity of the platform, this user went to the Advisory Council, which determined that said publication violated Meta’s policy on intimidation and harassment, in addition to the fact that it “mocks the serious physical injuries of the woman it represented”, reasons for which it had to be removed. Meta finally deleted this ‘post’.
From the Council, he assured that, despite the fact that the company finally acted on this infraction, it could have been the case that it did not meet certain requirements to proceed with this deletion.
“This publication would not have violated Meta’s rules on harassment and intimidation if the woman represented was not identifiable or if the legend had accompanied an image of a fictitious character,” the experts said in a statement.
Hence, they point out that “there is a vacuum in existing policies”, since the company led by Mark Zuckerberg “seems to allow content that normalizes gender violence”. For his part, Meta claimed to have focused “largely on identifying these gaps”, acknowledging that its Bullying and harassment policy generally identifies this content, although “not necessarily” recognizes gender-based violence content.
“This case also raises concerns about how Meta is applying its rules on harassment and intimidation,” the Council qualifies, pointing out that “Meta does not prioritize” violations such as those reported by the user for review by a moderator human.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The Content Advisory Council explained that the Oversight and Control Board annulled Meta’s original decision to keep this content on said social network.
On the other hand, it has recommended that the technology company undertake a process of developing policies with which a regulation is established with which content that normalizes gender violence can be addressed “through praise, justification, celebration or mockery” of this crime.
On the other, it has urged Meta to clarify that in Meta’s community standards on bullying and harassment the term ‘medical condition’ also includes ‘serious physical injury’.
