The Meta Supervisory Board Invites The Public To Comment On Hate Speech Moderation

JAKARTA - The Meta Supervisory Board, Facebook's parent company, on Thursday 17 October invited public comments on content discussing immigration issues and was deemed to have the potential to harm immigrants. In addition, they also shared two cases that Facebook moderators allowed to remain public, despite receiving reports from users.

The board will review whether Meta's policy to protect refugees, migrants, immigrants and asylum seekers solely from the most severe attacks on its social media platform is adequate. The Meta Supervisory Board, although funded by the giant social media company, is operating independently. After gathering comments from the public, the board can issue policy recommendations that are non-binding to Meta.

Two Controversial Cases

The first case raised by the Meta Supervisory Board involved a Facebook page owned by a far-right coalition party in Poland. In May, the page uploaded a meme that uses terms for black people that are widely considered offensive and insulting in Poland.

This post was viewed by more than 150,000 users, distributed more than 400 times, and received more than 250 comments. The post was reported 15 times by users because it was considered hate speech, but after a review by the human team on Meta, the post was left alone.

The second case occurred in Germany, where a Facebook page in June uploaded a picture of aempty-haired and blue-edged woman raising her hands in a signal to stop.

The image is accompanied by text stating that Germany no longer needs "group rape specialists." The post was also allowed to remain on the platform after being reviewed by Meta's human moderator.

After these two cases were raised by the Supervisory Board, Meta policy experts reviewed the decision, but they confirmed that their initial decision not to delete the content was correct.

Supervisory Board Steps

Hellehiring-Schmidt, co-chairman of the Supervisory Board and former Prime Minister of Denmark, confirmed that this symbolic case from Poland and Germany would assist the council in determining whether Meta needed to make more effort or whether the current move was sufficient in dealing with hate speech issues, especially those related to immigration.

"This is a critical issue that is very important to many people around the world",ORY-Schmidt said.

By inviting the public to provide input, the Meta Supervisory Board hopes to accommodate various perspectives related to how immigration-related content should be moderation, whether there are more stringent restrictions, or whether current policies are correct.

The final decision of the Supervisory Board, although non-binding, is often an important consideration for Meta in determining its platform policies. The board was founded as part of Meta's efforts to increase transparency and accountability in the handling of controversial content on their platforms, which includes Facebook and Instagram.

Meta has long been criticized for how its platform handles hate speech, especially those targeting minority groups, including immigrants. The Supervisory Board aims to provide a fairer and more balanced solution in enforcement of the rules, by listening to input from various parties, including users and experts.

With so many debates surrounding content moderation on social media, the decision to be taken based on public comments is expected to have a positive impact on the protection of vulnerable groups from online hate attacks.