Facebook to consider satirical content when judging hate speech violations

What you need to know

• Facebook is adding how it handles satirical content in its community standards page.
• Decision comes after Oversight Board reviewed a comment that Facebook initially took down for violating community standards.
• The board recommended several points, and Facebook is assessing whether or not to adopt them.

Facebook is updating its community standards page to clarify when posts are considered satirical when “assessing potential Hate Speech violations.”

The decision to do so came after a user posted a meme satirizing “the Turkish government’s efforts to deny the Armenian genocide.” Facebook took the post down, citing the post broke its rules but reinstated the post following a review from the Oversight Board.

The board said the company was wrong to pull the post and noted that Facebook had previous issues determining when a post is considered satirical.

“Facebook has acted to comply with the board’s decision immediately, and this content has been reinstated,” Facebook said. “We’ll add information to the Community Standards that makes it clear where we consider satire as part of our assessment of context-specific decisions. …This change will allow teams to consider satire when assessing potential Hate Speech violations.”

This is the only recommendation that Facebook acted on after the board’s review. The others include that users should be able to cite exceptions to Facebook’s hate speech rules when appealing. Facebook said that it was “assessing feasibility” of the recommendations the board put out.

Facebook had previously come under fire for its content moderation policies, particularly during the 2020 presidential election. Both sides of the political spectrum argued that the social platform either took it too far or not far enough.

The updated community standards come just after Facebook introduced new tools for group admins to better monitor their communities.