Meta Oversight Board declares Israel-Hamas videos should not have been taken down
Christopher Hutton
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Meta‘s content moderation “Supreme Court” said that the company’s decision to remove two videos featuring violent footage in the Israel-Hamas war was in error.
The Meta Oversight Board ruled on Tuesday that the company’s decision to remove two videos featuring hostages and injured people in Gaza was wrong. The footage was valuable because it helped illustrate the human suffering in the conflict, the board ruled.
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The decision stands in contrast with increased interest in moderating misinformation arising from Hamas’s conflict with Israel, including pressure from the European Union to crack down. The decision was the first time that the board had examined a case at an expedited rate.
One of the removed videos featured “an Israeli woman begging her kidnappers not to kill her as she is taken hostage during the terrorist raids on Israel on October 7,” the board stated, while the second dealt with “the aftermath of a strike on or near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City during Israel’s ground offensive in the north of the Gaza Strip” and featured injured and killed Palestinians.
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The board emphasized the importance of keeping the videos to ensure the public knew what was happening in Gaza. It also noted the importance of preserving evidence of “potential human-rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law.”
Meta had previously been targeted by EU regulators for how it handled Israel-Gaza social media posts and faced the risk of legal action if it did not take more aggressive action to crack down on Hamas-created disinformation.