Mark Zuckerberg and Meta Platforms have been rebuked over a controversial policy change implemented in January this year.
The rebuke came from Meta’s Oversight Board, which operates independently but is funded by Meta. It has been labelled Facebook’s Supreme Court, and it issues rulings on content moderation decisions for contentious topics and posts.
But now Oversight Board has on Wednesday sharply rebuked Meta over a policy overhaul in January, and has issued 17 recommendations for the social networking giant.
Fact-checkers dropped
On 7 January 2025 Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had announced in a video “it is time to get back to our roots around free expression. We’re replacing fact checkers with Community Notes…”
Zuckerberg confirmed the platform was ending third party fact-checking program in the US that it had begun back in 2016, and was moving to a Community Notes model embraced by Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter).
Meta had alleged censorship problems with fact-checking due to the biases and perspectives of the fact-checkers themselves (allegations the fact-checking organisations have strongly denied).
But Zuckerberg’s decision triggered strong criticism around the world.
Indeed, the move was criticised by internal staff, fact checkers, human rights groups, online hate campaigners, and by Helle Thorning-Schmidt, co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Board.
Then in March Meta confirmed that it was testing its new Community Notes content moderation tool across Facebook, Instagram and Threads from Tuesday 18 March.
Meta also confirmed that it would be using Elon Musk’s X algorithm to do so. “We won’t be reinventing the wheel,” it said at the time. “Initially we will use X’s open source algorithm as the basis of our rating system. This will allow us to build on what X has created and improve it for our own platforms over time.”
“We expect Community Notes to be less biased than the third party fact checking program it replaces, and to operate at a greater scale when it is fully up and running,” Meta claimed at the time.
Oversight Board
Now the Oversight Board has issued its rulings for 11 complaints, to address “freedom of expression in relation to gender identity, apartheid imagery, anti-migrant speech, hatred against people with disabilities, suppression of LGBTQIA+ voices and the 2024 UK riots.”
In a number of the cases the Oversight Board acknowledged that while some of the posted content was controversial, it could remain due to “online international freedom of expression standards.”
But on other cases, including three posts relating to the UK riots of summer 2024 which advocated violence against immigrants and Muslims, as well as cases where Meta incorrectly removed a drag artist’s video, and two cases of anti-migrant speech from Poland and Germany, Meta was firmly rebuked.
“While Meta’s January 7 policy changes did not affect the outcomes of the cases published today, recommendations in today’s decisions nevertheless respond to some of those changes,” said the Oversight Board.
“Our decisions note concerns that Meta’s January 7, 2025, policy and enforcement changes were announced hastily, in a departure from regular procedure, with no public information shared as to what, if any, prior human rights due diligence the company performed,” it added.
“The Board calls on Meta to live up to its public commitment to uphold the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, including through engagement with impacted stakeholders,” it said.
“As these changes are being rolled out globally, the Board emphasises it is now essential that Meta identifies and addresses adverse impacts on human rights that may result from them. This should include assessing whether reducing its reliance on automated detection of policy violations could have uneven consequences globally, especially in countries experiencing current or recent crises, such as armed conflicts.”
The Board has issued 17 recommendations today, relating to Meta’s 7 January changes, the company’s policies, and its enforcement systems.
Currying favour
The announcement set the board on a possible collision course with Mark Zuckerberg, who has worked hard to mend fences with Trump and roll back a decade’s worth of initiatives to tackle online harms such as hate speech, misinformation and incitement to violence.
This has seen Meta donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, and Zuckerberg having dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Trump.
Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg (former a UK deputy prime minister), also left the company and was replaced by Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican.
Meta Platforms also elected a close friend of Donald Trump to its board of directors, along with two others.
Dana White, chief executive of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), has a long relationship with Trump and spoke in support of Trump’s election campaign in 2016, 2020 and 2024.