Meta’s oversight board says viral videos left on Facebook threatened LGBTQ+ people in Nigeria

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Meta’s oversight board expressed serious concern Tuesday over the company’s failure to remove a viral graphic video showing two men bleeding after they were apparently beaten over alleged homosexuality.

The video was released in Nigeria, one of more than 30 of the 54 African countries that criminalize homosexuality under laws that have broad public support despite constitutional guarantees of freedom. Such laws are often used to target and illegally arrest people suspected of being gay, while attacks against them are often ignored.

The report said the damage caused by the video, which was viewed more than 3.6 million times between December 2023 and February this year, was “immediate and irreversible.”

The board said the content “shared and mocked violence and discrimination” and despite being reported multiple times and reviewed by three human moderators, it remained on Facebook for about five months despite violating four different rules.

“After the video was no longer available, the likelihood that someone would identify the men and the post encouraged users to harm other LGBTQIA+ people in Nigeria increased,” the panel said. “Even after it was removed, the panel’s investigations showed that sequences of the same video still existed on Facebook.”

In the video, two men were seen bleeding as a crowd questioned them about their identities and sexual orientation.

Meta could not be reached for immediate comment.

The company admitted two errors regarding the said video, the panel said, in that its automated systems identified the language spoken in the video as English, while it was the Igbo language spoken in southeastern Nigeria, “but by Meta is not supported for large-scale content moderation.” and that Meta’s human review teams also incorrectly identified the language as Swahili.

“This raises concerns about the way content in unsupported languages ​​is handled, the choice of languages ​​the company supports for comprehensive review, and the accuracy of translations provided to reviewers in multiple Languages ​​work,” the panel said.

In its report, the board recommended that Meta update its Community Standard for Coordinating Harm and Promoting Crime to include clear examples of “at-risk groups” and an assessment of the enforcement accuracy of the ban on disclosing the identity or location of suspects As a member of such groups, you will ensure that speech recognition systems identify content in unsupported languages ​​and provide accurate translations while submitting content for review.