Case Summary and Outcome

The Oversight Board issued a summary decision on April 18, 2024, overturning Meta’s original decisions to leave up three racist images enforcing offensive stereotypes against African Americans on Facebook, such as depictions of absent fathers, reliance on welfare, and looting. The Board found this case demonstrated Meta’s failure to properly enforce its Hate Speech and Bullying and Harassment policies, highlighting how such lapses disproportionately harm protected groups, urging Meta to explicitly prohibit implicit discriminatory content that audiences could reasonably interpret as harmful. Meta reversed its decision after the Board notified it of the user’s appeal.

*The Oversight Board is a separate entity from Meta and will provide its independent judgment on both individual cases and questions of policy. Both the Board and its administration are funded by an independent trust. The Board has the authority to decide whether Facebook and Instagram should allow or remove content. The Board issues full decisions and summary decisions. Decisions, except summary decisions, are binding unless implementing them could violate the law. The Board can also choose to issue recommendations on the company’s content policies. Summary decisions are a transparency mechanism, providing information to the public on Meta’s decision making and the Board’s recommendations relating to cases where Meta reversed its original decision on its own accord, after receiving notice from the Board about the appeal.

Facts

In late 2023, the Oversight Board received three appeals regarding three different Facebook posts containing negative material about African Americans.

The first post contained a computer-generated image depicting a shop named “Loot” on fire, with cartoon Black figures stealing merchandise and fleeing the store. The user captioned it as the “next Pixar film.” The post received around 500,000 views.

The second post was also of a computer-generated image parodied a movie poster titled EBT (a reference to the U.S. social welfare system), showing a Black woman with exaggerated features holding a shopping cart filled with Cheetos. The names of African American victims of police brutality, Trayvon Martin and George Floyd, replaced the actors’ names at the top of the poster.

The third post was of a meme falsely claiming that Adobe had developed software to detect photoshopped images. It included an image of a woman with colorful markings on her face (implying digital manipulation) alongside an image of a Black family eating a meal, where the father and food were covered in similar markings—suggesting they had been artificially added. The post reinforced stereotypes of the absence of father figures in Black families. The post was viewed over 14 million times.

Despite user reports, Meta initially kept all three posts on Facebook, prompting the reporting users to escalate their appeals to the Oversight Board.

Decision Overview

The main issue before the Board was whether Meta’s original decision to leave these three posts up was compatible with its content policies and human rights obligations.

In their appeals to the Board, the users argued that the posts perpetuated harmful racial stereotypes against African Americans.

On the other hand, Meta removed all three posts after being notified by the Board of the appeals. Meta justified the removals under its Hate Speech policy, which bans attacks against people on the basis of race and ethnicity, including dehumanizing speech, comparisons to thieves, mocking victims of hate crimes, and implications of inferiority.

Additionally, the second post violated Meta’s Bullying and Harassment policy by including the names of Trayvon Martin and George Floyd. This policy prohibits celebrating or mocking deaths, and Meta stated that the post trivialized their killings by suggesting they were starring in a fictional film.

The Board noted that these cases demonstrated Meta’s failure to enforce its Hate Speech and Bullying and Harassment policies effectively. This was further highlighted by the fact that two of these posts received significantly high views. The Board emphasized the disproportionate harm such under-enforcement inflicts on protected groups and their right to freedom from discrimination on Meta’s platforms. The Board urged Meta to strategically prioritize combating hate speech against marginalized communities.

Moreover, the Board reiterated its recommendation from the “Knin Cartoon” decision, calling on Meta to clarify its Hate Speech policy and internal guidance to prohibit implicit discriminatory references, particularly when audiences could reasonably interpret them as such. Meta reported only partial implementation of this recommendation.

Ultimately, the Board overturned Meta’s original decisions to retain the three posts but acknowledged Meta’s correction of the initial errors.