Meta criticized by Oversight Board for not removing Brazilian pro-insurrection video
Meta’s Oversight Board has made a fresh ruling that emphasizes Facebook’s ongoing involvement in promoting hazardous election discourse. The Board has overturned Meta’s previous verdict to keep a video, which urged insurrectionist activities in Brazil after the inauguration of its new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, public on the platform.
Lula took office on Jan. 1, and two days later a user posted a video of the prominent Brazilian general — and a supporter of former president Jair Bolsonaro — telling people to “go to the streets” and “go to the National Congress … [and] the Supreme Court.” Over the video, Portuguese text reads: “Come to Brasília! Let’s storm it! Let’s draw the three powers.” The Three Powers Plaza is located in the Brazilian capital and houses the offices of the Congress, the Supreme Court and the President.
Meta had previously acknowledged the risk of civil and election-focused unrest in Brazil, first labeling the country a “temporary high risk area” in September 2022 and then continuing until the end of February this year. However, when the first user reported the video, a Moderator did not find it against Meta’s policies – the second Moderator agreed after complaining. A total of seven moderators reviewed reports from four people between January 3rd and 4th, but none found a problem with the video. The caption accompanying the video called for a “siege” of Brazil’s Congress as a last ditch effort. Five days after the video hit Facebook, hundreds of protesters broke into three government buildings, setting fires, breaking windows and attacking police officers.
The next day, Meta called the riots a “violation” and claimed it had “removed content that encouraged people to take up arms or forcefully attack Congress, the presidential palace, and other federal buildings.” However, the video remained on Facebook until January 20th, when Meta removed the post after the censor board chose to list its review on it. Moderators should classify a post as violating Meta rules when it requires forced entry into a high-risk location (such as an administration building) in a temporary high-risk location (as Brazil was at the time). Meta stated that leaving the video with a military official calling for mutiny was a “mistake”.
In its decision, the review board said it was “deeply concerned” that Meta Moderators had consistently found the video to be in violation of its policies. The board recommended that Meta “finally develop a framework for evaluating its election integrity efforts. This includes creating and sharing metrics for successful election integrity efforts, including those related to Meta’s enforcement of its content policies and advertisements.” It also urged the company to expand its protocols when assessing whether content causes harm in high-risk events.
Since 2020, the Supervisory Board has operated as an independently funded unit to which individuals can complain about decisions regarding the visibility of content. It has the power to allow or remove Facebook and Instagram content with statements outlining its reasoning for each decision. The board currently has 22 members (the report says there will eventually be 40), including Nighat Dad, founder of the Digital Rights Foundation, and Ronaldo Lemos, a professor at Rio De Janeiro State University’s Faculty of Law.
Meta has served as a home for right-wing conspiracy theorists and organizers, with at least 650,000 posts arguing against Joe Biden’s victory shared on Facebook between US Election Day 2020 and the uprising that began on January 6, 2021. The social media platform had implemented some security features after misinformation spread around it around the 2016 election, but it continued to do so, and ahead of the 2022 midterms and Brazilian general elections, Meta quietly rolled back many of the safeguards.
