The Meta Oversight Board said removing the content could impact “freedom of expression and access to information” in the war. | Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge
Meta’s Oversight Board has criticized the company’s automated moderation tools for being too aggressive after two videos that depicted hostages, injured civilians, and possible casualties in the Israel-Hamas war were — it says — unfairly removed from Facebook and Instagram. In a report published on Tuesday, the external review panel determined that the posts should have remained live and that removing the content has a high cost to “freedom of expression and access to information” in the war. (A warning for our readers: the following descriptions of the content may be disturbing.)
One of the removed videos, posted to Facebook, depicts an Israeli woman during the October 7th attack on Israel by Hamas, pleading with kidnappers who were…