The Board, often referred to as the ‘supreme court’ of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram’s parent company, issued these recommendations during a review of the permanent blocking of an Instagram account that threatened a journalist.
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“Meta acted correctly by permanently disabling the account due to (…) serious threats of violence,” including posting photos of the journalist with a target on her face, the board stated.
However, “this case raises concerns about due process and proportionality related to account management, and the clarity of Meta’s rules,” it added.
The Oversight Board, composed of prominent representatives from academia, media, and civil society, is the last resort for penalized or blocked Meta users, examining the company’s compliance with its own policies and global human rights standards.
Board members received more than 750 official comments on Thursday’s case, as well as “countless complaints from Meta users (…) who lost access to their accounts,” the board wrote, adding that they are “concerned about the volume and urgency of these requests.”
Blocking an account on a social network can sever vital real-world contacts, and “users have strongly expressed how losing accounts has harmed their social lives, mental health, or financial well-being,” it added.
Illustrating its concern with the case of the account blocked for threatening a journalist, the board stated that Meta should have acted faster to protect both her safety and the rights of the associated account.
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“If Meta had reacted more quickly to its violations, the account owner might have had more opportunities to understand the nature of their transgression and correct their behavior,” they said.
The board emphasized that Meta’s policy on account restrictions or blocking in response to misconduct is scattered across several pages and sometimes contradicts itself.
Users need clear information, and moderators need a more consistent set of policies that can be implemented but also provide flexibility in extreme cases, they said.
Even blocked users should be provided with information about which rule they violated and a clear history of enforcement actions, the board stated.
This is especially important in cases where people have been wrongly accused of violating rules, their accounts have been hijacked, or they have been penalized for interacting with content that Meta itself did not penalize.
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