NEW YORK: Meta’s independent Oversight Board said on Thursday it will review how the company has handled violent content on its social media platforms in two cases involving hostage-taking and bombing in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The cases will be the first to use a new expedited review mechanism announced earlier this year that requires the board to make decisions within 30 days. The board usually deliberates for several months on its cases. The board’s decision to take on the cases comes as social media platforms have been flooded with violent, hateful and misleading content in the two-month-old war between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement in Gaza which carried out the Oct. 7 attack on Israeli towns that set off the conflict.
After that attack, Meta temporarily lowered its threshold for removing potentially harmful content, including posts that clearly identified hostages taken by Hamas. The company has also faced accusations that it was suppressing expressions of support for Palestinians living under Israel’s military response in Gaza.
In one case to be reviewed by the board, Meta took down a video on Instagram showing the aftermath of an explosion at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, including injured and dead children, the board said.
A caption on the video claimed the hospital had been targeted by the “usurping occupation,” an apparent reference to the Israeli army, it said. The hospital, the biggest medical facility in the Palestinian Territories, has been at the center of accusations of war crimes on both sides of the conflict. Human Rights Watch last month said its investigation found the explosion at the hospital was likely caused by a rocket commonly used by Palestinian armed groups.
Meta restored the content with a warning screen after the board selected the case for review.
The other case involves a video on Facebook showing a woman begging her kidnappers not to kill her as she is driven away on a motorbike. A caption urges people to raise awareness of what happened on Oct. 7, the board said.
Meta initially took down the video, but reversed its decision weeks later in response to trends around how hostage kidnapping videos were being shared, according to the board.
As with the video in the first case, it was restored with a warning screen, the board said.
In a statement, Meta said it welcomed the Oversight Board’s review and pledged to implement its decision in each case.
Meta oversight board to examine Israel-Hamas war content
https://arab.news/vwz92
Meta oversight board to examine Israel-Hamas war content
- Oversight board to review two specific cases
- New expedited review mechanism ensures that the decision’s outcome will be announced within 30 days
Mark Zuckerberg set to testify in watershed social media trial
- The plaintiff, a now 20-year-old woman, is seeking to hold social media companies responsible for harms to children who use their platforms
- Zuckerberg’s testimony comes a week after the testimony of Adam Mosseri, the head of Meta’s Instagram
LOS ANGELES: Mark Zuckerberg will testify in an unprecedented social media trial that questions whether Meta’s platforms deliberately addict and harm children.
Meta’s CEO is expected to answer tough questions on Wednesday from attorneys representing a now 20-year-old woman identified by the initials KGM, who claims her early use of social media addicted her to the technology and exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts. Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube are the two remaining defendants in the case, which TikTok and Snap have settled.
Zuckerberg has testified in other trials and answered questions from Congress about youth safety on Meta’s platforms, and he apologized to families at that hearing whose lives had been upended by tragedies they believed were because of social media. This trial, though, marks the first time Zuckerberg will answer similar questions in front of a jury. and, again, bereaved parents are expected to be in the limited courtroom seats available to the public.
The case, along with two others, has been selected as a bellwether trial, meaning its outcome could impact how thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies would play out.
A Meta spokesperson said the company strongly disagrees with the allegations in the lawsuit and said they are “confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.”
One of Meta’s attorneys, Paul Schmidt, said in his opening statement that the company is not disputing that KGM experienced mental health struggles, but rather that Instagram played a substantial factor in those struggles. He pointed to medical records that showed a turbulent home life, and both he and an attorney representing YouTube argue she turned to their platforms as a coping mechanism or a means of escaping her mental health struggles.
Zuckerberg’s testimony comes a week after that of Adam Mosseri, the head of Meta’s Instagram, who said in the courtroom that he disagrees with the idea that people can be clinically addicted to social media platforms. Mosseri maintained that Instagram works hard to protect young people using the service, and said it’s “not good for the company, over the long run, to make decisions that profit for us but are poor for people’s well-being.”
Much of Mosseri’s questioning from the plaintiff’s lawyer, Mark Lanier, centered on cosmetic filters on Instagram that changed people’s appearance — a topic that Lanier is sure to revisit with Zuckerberg. He is also expected to face questions about Instagram’s algorithm, the infinite nature of Meta’ feeds and other features the plaintiffs argue are designed to get users hooked.
Meta is also facing a separate trial in New Mexico that began last week.
