Conselho da Meta says that the company made a mistake by not removing scamming videos in Brazil – 06/22/2023 – Politics

The Oversight Board of Meta (Oversight Board) said this Thursday (22) that the platform was wrong to not remove videos that incited the invasion and attacks on Brasilia and that it did not comply with its own rules prohibiting incitement to violence.

“(Meta) has not done enough to combat the potential abuse of its platforms through coordinated campaigns like the ones we’ve seen in Brazil,” said the oversight board, which reviews decisions about content moderation on Facebook and Instagram and sets precedents. .

The body is independent, but funded by Meta. “The removal of this and similar content is necessary and proportionate to protect Brazilians’ right to vote and participate in public life.”

The decision refers to a video posted on Facebook, on January 3, in which a general called people to “siege” Congress as a “last alternative” after the inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).

According to the council’s decision, the video shows a general giving a speech in which he calls on people to “take to the streets” and “go to Congress and the Federal Supreme Court”. Still according to the council, the video shows images of a fire in Praça dos Três Poderes with the caption “Come to Brasilia! Let’s besiege the three powers”.

The content was watched more than 18,000 times. The video also questioned the electoral system, with the words “we demand the source code”, a phrase used by supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) to indicate alleged vulnerabilities of electronic voting machines.

Five days after the video was posted on Facebook, on January 8, thousands of people invaded and vandalized Congress, the STF (Federal Supreme Court) and the Planalto Palace in Brasília, contesting the result of the presidential election and calling for military intervention. .

On the day the video was posted, a user reported the content for violating our Community Guidelines on Violence and Incitement, which prohibit calls to force entry into high-risk locations. In total, four users reported the content seven times between January 3rd and 4th.

After the first complaint, the content was analyzed by a moderator, who concluded that the video did not violate the platform’s rules. The user appealed the decision, but it was maintained by a second moderator. The following day, the six other reports were reviewed by five different moderators, all of whom concluded that the video did not violate Meta’s policies and therefore would not be removed.

On January 9, the day after the Brasilia attacks, Meta declared the January 8 raid a “violating event” under its policy on dangerous organizations and individuals, and said it would remove “content that supports or praises these actions”.

The platform also announced that it had designated Brazil a “temporary high-risk location” and that it “was removing content urging people to take up arms or forcibly invade Congress, the presidential palace and other government buildings”.

After the board selected this case for review, Meta claimed that its various decisions to keep scammer content online had been a mistake. Meta only removed the video on January 20, more than two weeks after it was posted.

When contacted, the board said it could not share the video because of user privacy rules.

Meta, in its statements on proposals for regulating social networks in Brazil, claims that the platform already has tools to efficiently moderate content that violates its rules.

“This case raises concerns about the effectiveness of Meta’s electoral integrity efforts in Brazil’s 2022 election and elsewhere,” the council said in its decision.

The board said Meta’s decision to keep content online at a time of rising political violence was “a clear breach of its own rules.”

And the agency also expressed concern about the company’s lack of transparency. When the board asked Meta for information about election content on the platform, “the company explained that it had no data on the prevalence” of these posts.

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Among the council’s recommendations, which are non-binding, is the development of tools that allow Meta to measure the effectiveness of its election integrity efforts and release the assessments to the public “to prevent its platforms from being used to promote political violence.”

The body also suggested that the Target include the post-election period in these efforts, to protect the peaceful transition of power. The Election Operational Center only operated between September and November 2022 in Brazil.

In clarification, Meta told the board that the seven moderators who did not find it necessary to remove the coup video were based in Europe, but were fluent in Portuguese and had the cultural knowledge to analyze Brazilian content.

According to Meta, the lack of punctuation in the sentences of the video could have led the moderators to mistakenly interpret the content as neutral. Meta admitted that many moderators do not watch the entirety of the videos.