The Meta Supervisory Board Reviews The Controversy Of Iranian Women's Video Posting On Instagram

Instagram reviews the policy of posting videos in Iran. (photo: dock. pexels)

JAKARTA - The Supervisory Board for Meta Platforms, the owner of Instagram, announced on Thursday 16 November that it is reviewing the app's decision to maintain, delete, and then recover a post showing a man confronting a woman in Iran for not wearing a hijab in public.

The Supervisory Board was founded at the end of 2020 to review Facebook and Instagram's decision to delete or maintain certain content and decide whether to certify or cancel the actions of the social media company.

The board may issue recommendations to Meta, which are non-binding, but the company must provide a response within 60 days.

Despite being financed by Meta, the Council is run independently and says it chose the post, which was uploaded earlier this year, to "explor Meta's policies and practices in moderating content that could affect ongoing protests in Iran."

The council invites the public to send their comments about the case, as usual.

Iran experienced sporadic protests in mid-September in response to widespread action by security forces a year after the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurd woman who died in detention and sparked some of the worst political unrest in the past four decades.

In a statement, the council stated that the Instagram video they were reviewing showed the face of the woman who was arrested after the incident.

The accompanying information, in Persian, shows user support for the woman and is broader for Iranian women who are against the regime, while commenting on the arrest.

The council stated that the video was originally identified by artificial intelligence (AI) for violating community guidelines and sent for human review. Meta reviewers disagreed with any violations, so posts remained until a member of the public reported it. Posts were later deleted, but were eventually restored when users who uploaded them said it highlighted the courage of Iranian women, the council said in a statement.

The council stated that the video case was included in its strategic priorities, which included crisis and conflict and gender situation.