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2023L
Today, the Oversight Board selected a case bundle appealed by users on Facebook and Instagram for three different pieces of content (two posted to Facebook and one posted to Instagram) all concerning abortion.
The first piece of content concerns a post made to a Facebook Group by an admin of the group of a photo with text overlay that criticizes what they see as “Pro-Abortion Logic” that doesn’t want one to be poor, starved, or unwanted and concludes “So we’ll just kill you instead.”
The second piece of content concerns a post on Instagram which includes a photo of an article with the headline: “21 South Carolina GOP Lawmakers Propose Death Penalty for Women Who Have Abortions.” The caption of the photo criticizes the subject of the article pointing out the discrepancy between proposing a death penalty while claiming to be ‘pro-life.’
The third piece of content concerns a post made on Facebook with a link to a news article that covers the same topic as the second piece of content with the headline: “South Carolina GOP Lawmakers Propose Death Penalty for Women Who Have Abortions.” The caption criticizes the subject of the article questioning the stance of killing to make the point that killing is wrong and questioning how this position lines up with #AllLivesMatter.
For all three cases, upon initial review, Meta took down the posts for violating our policy on Violence and Incitement, as laid out in our Instagram Community Guidelines and Facebook Community Standards. However, upon additional review, we determined in each instance that we removed the pieces of content in error and reinstated all three posts.
We will implement the board’s decision once it has finished deliberating, and we will update this post accordingly. Please see the board’s website for the decision when they issue it.
Case decision
We welcome the Oversight Board’s decision today on this case. The board overturned Meta’s original decision to remove the content from the platforms. Meta previously reinstated this content, and as a result, no further action will be taken on the case content.
After conducting a review of the recommendation provided by the board in addition to their decision, we will update this page.
