The last case refers to a post from last October that contained an online meme that referred to the potential use of violence against those who criticized Prophet Muhammad. It included hashtags that called Macron the devil and encouraged a boycott of French products.
In its initial decision, Facebook said the post broke community standards regarding violence and incitement, although the company told the Supervisory Board that there was tension between what was a legitimate religious speech and a possible threat of violence.
In its decision, the majority of the independent group, which is funded by Facebook, disagreed.
“Most found that, for this specific post, Facebook did not accurately assess all contextual information and that international human rights standards in the expression justify the Council’s decision to restore the content,” the group said in a statement on Friday reference to the decision.
A Facebook representative was not immediately available for comment.
The outside group said the post was unlikely to cause harm, suggesting that the tech giant was overly sensitive to possible hate speech problems targeting or coming from Muslims on its platforms. Facebook will now have to reinstate the post and the Oversight Board has recommended that the company provide users with additional information on how it has enforced its online standards linked to potential violent threats online.
Part of the group’s mandate is to help Facebook decide which posts are in conflict with the company’s content policies, although the Supervisory Board, for now, can only review posts that have already been removed from the platform.
This involves trying to create a body of cases on difficult free speech issues that can be used to update the tech giant’s approach to future problem areas, although critics say the group the group doesn’t have enough power to do a significant change.