Facebook Inc.’s Oversight Board announced today that it has chosen its first batch of cases to review.

The board, which was announced at the beginning of the year, is made up of academics, media specialists and human rights advocates from around the world. These people are tasked with looking at problematic content that Facebook has taken down and will assess if the company made the right decision.

“More than 20,000 cases were referred to the Oversight Board following the opening of user appeals in October 2020,” the board said in a press release. “As the Board cannot hear every appeal, we are prioritizing cases that have the potential to affect lots of users around the world, are of critical importance to public discourse or raise important questions about Facebook’s policies.”

One case involves former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. A Facebook user posted two tweets of his, one of which included the sentence, “Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.” The post was taken down under Facebook’s hate speech policy, but the user appealed this, stating that he only wanted to make people aware of the former Prime Minister’s “horrible words.”

Another case involved an Instagram user in Brazil who posted pictures of female breasts with explanations about the symptoms of breast cancer. Some of those images showed uncovered nipples, so Facebook took the post down, citing its adult nudity and sexual activity policy. The user argued that the post was only meant to bring awareness to breast cancer.

A user in the U.S. had a post removed, one that he had posted in the past and then reshared when prompted by Facebook under its “On This Day” function. The post included a quote by Joseph Goebbels, the Reich minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, about the unimportance of truth and appealing to people’s emotions rather than their intellect. Facebook removed the content for violating its policy on dangerous individuals and organizations, but the user argued that the post is an important historical artifact, adding that he considers the U.S. presidency to be following a similar fascist model.

With these posts, as well as the others, the board can make a decision on what to do and Facebook must comply with that decision. The public is also invited to comment on the cases. If decisions are reversed, Facebook is asked to employ a similar rationale for cases in the future that are comparable. It’s expected that these first cases will be resolved within 90 days.

Photo: David Stewart/Flickr