Facebook’s “supreme court” is investigating the social media giant for allowing users to post the controversial pro-Palestinian slogan “from the river to the sea” following “controversies surrounding the phrase’s meaning” since October 7th.
As reported by the Telegraph, the company’s Oversight Board, a panel of academics and campaigners who review moderation policies, said it would consider three posts where parent company Meta left the phrase online after appeals from users. The report continues:
Hate speech campaigners have condemned chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as anti-Semitic and genocidal, arguing the words imply the destruction of the state of Israel and are used as a rallying cry by terror groups including Hamas.
The board – whose members include ex-Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the former prime minister of Denmark – will look at three posts that were viewed millions of times between them.
All three posts were reported by multiple users and allowed to remain online by Meta. One post condemned “senseless slaughter” by “Zionist Israeli occupiers”.
The panel said it had picked the cases to determine how Meta should moderate the phrase “given the resurgence in its use after October 7, 2023, and the controversies surrounding the phrase’s meaning”. The board’s decisions are non-binding.
Meta told the board that the specific posts were not found to have violated its rules against violence, hate speech or support for dangerous groups.
The company said use of the slogan had already been reviewed, and that it was not necessarily a call for violence or linked exclusively to support for Hamas.
In January, the Oversight Board warned that Facebook and Instagram, which is also owned by Meta, were failing to remove Holocaust denial posts. One post, which questioned whether six million Jews had been killed by the Nazis, remained up for three years.
It said anti-Semites had been able to evade Meta’s detection tools using images, memes or code words and that Meta was overly reliant on automated systems to review posts.
Worth reading in full.
Since Israel’s military response to Hamas’s October 7th terrorist attack on its southern Kibbutzim, the FSU has regularly been asked where the legal line between free speech and ‘hate speech’ is drawn, specifically in the current context.
In response, we’ve produced two comprehensive set of FAQs on the issue for our members.
One relates to freedom of expression, the other on campus — outlining the relevant laws to be aware of and shedding light on that difficult ‘grey zone’ where the boundary is between lawful free speech and speech that may be construed as stirring up hatred or inciting violence. Click the button below to read the FAQs on the legal limits to online freedom of expression.
And the FAQs on the limits to freedom of expression on campus are below.
To join us and get access to these and the many other, similar documents we prepare for our members, click the button below. Without your support we wouldn’t be able to do the work that we do, standing up for the free speech rights of our members in the workplace and the public square. Membership starts from just £4.99 a month, and includes regular newsletters, FAQs and briefings, exclusive online content and free or heavily discounted tickets to our regular live events — link is below!
