Meta’s Oversight Board rightly rejects outright ban on phrase, ‘From the river to the sea’

Meta’s Oversight Board has affirmed the social media company’s decision to leave up three Facebook posts containing the controversial slogan, “From the river to the sea.” The board’s determination that a blanket ban on the phrase would unjustifiably limit political speech aligns with what FIRE told the board in a public comment.

The Oversight Board is an independent body of experts that reviews Meta's content moderation decisions on the company’s Facebook, Instagram, and Threads platforms to determine whether those decisions comport with Meta’s policies, values, and human rights commitments, including that of free expression. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg approved the board’s creation in 2018, describing it as a “Supreme Court.”

FIRE Public Comment to Meta Oversight Board - Posts that Include "From the River to the Sea" - May 21, 2024

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In May, the Oversight Board announced its review of moderation decisions made on three posts containing the phrase, “From the river to the sea,” and issued a call for public comments. 

In one case, a Facebook user commented on a video with a caption that encourages others to “speak up” and includes hashtags such as “#ceasefire” and “#freepalestine.” The comment uses the hashtags, “#FromTheRiverToTheSea” and “#DefundIsrael.” The Facebook user in the second case posted what appears to be an image of watermelon slices spelling out, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” In the third case, a Facebook page reshared a community organization’s post that declared support for Palestinians, condemned their “senseless slaughter” by “Zionist Israeli occupiers,” and ended with, “From The River To The Sea.”

Facebook users had reported the posts as violating the platform’s community standards, but Meta found otherwise.

In its decision today, the board agreed with Meta, concluding that the posts did not violate the company’s rules and that keeping them up was consistent with Meta’s human rights responsibilities. Much of the board’s reasoning reflects the points raised in FIRE’s public comment.

We explained that the phrase, “From the river to the sea,” holds “different meanings depending on who is using it.” In some instances, such as its use by the terrorist group Hamas, it may be a call for the genocide or ethnic cleansing of Israeli Jews. But many activists, politicians, and others characterize the slogan as a peaceful call for Palestinian equality and self-determination. To fulfill its commitment to free expression, we told the board, “Meta must err on the side of allowing speech, particularly on consequential, vigorously debated issues of public concern like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and especially where views may differ on the very meaning that language or messages may convey.” 

Both Meta and the Oversight Board made the right decision by leaving up the posts in question.

The board’s decision likewise recognizes that the phrase “has multiple meanings, and has been adopted by various groups and individuals, each with different interpretations and intentions.” Because it “does not have a single meaning, a blanket ban on content that includes the phrase, a default rule towards removal of such content, or even using it as a signal to trigger enforcement or review, would hinder protected political speech in unacceptable ways.”

FIRE recognizes that Meta is a private company in the business of distributing speech, which means it has a First Amendment right to moderate content on its platforms as it sees fit. But the company states its “commitment to expression is paramount.” While Meta also has community standards that limit certain kinds of speech it considers harmful, it pledges to moderate content “in a way that gives free expression maximum possible range.”

Despite the positive outcome in this case, Meta maintains hate speech policies that are in tension with its “paramount” commitment to free expression. The board acknowledged Meta could ban content, including certain uses of “From the river to the sea,” if it is interpreted to call for the exclusion of certain groups or to “glorify” “dangerous organizations and individuals.” As with all hate speech policies, these rules suffer from vagueness and subjectivity, which opens the door to arbitrary enforcement and chills political discussion. Meta could choose to hew closer to First Amendment standards, which would still prohibit true threats and incitement to immediate violence.

The danger of suppressing valuable contributions to the marketplace of ideas isn’t the only rationale for free speech. There’s a strong case for Meta allowing even speech that most would find utterly hateful and abhorrent because it is valuable to know what people actually think. As the author and journalist Jonathan Rauch wrote:

Solving hate by banning hate speech is like solving global warming by breaking all the thermometers. All it does is make the hate harder to hear, harder to identify, harder to confront, harder to root out.

Still, both Meta and the Oversight Board made the right decision by leaving up the posts in question. The board deserves credit for its transparent and detailed analysis, which engages with public input and takes Meta's commitment to free speech seriously.