Meta Asked To Mitigate Information Asymmetries During Conflict

In October 2025, the Oversight Board, a body making precedent-setting content moderation decisions on the social media platforms Facebook, Instagram and Threads, issued a decision calling on Meta to mitigate information asymmetries in armed conflicts. The Oversight Board is a body examining whether Meta’s decisions are in line with its policies, values and human rights commitments. Users of the three platforms can appeal to the Oversight Board when they have exhausted Meta’s appeals process to challenge the company’s decision on content.

The October decision of the Oversight Board relates to posts concerning the situation in Syria. In late 2024, two Facebook users in Syria posted content related to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an organization designated as a terrorist group by the U.N. Security Council. HTS led the offensive that overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad. As reported by the Oversight Board:

• In the first case, a user whose appeal to the Board stated they are a journalist posted a video in Arabic to their page in November. The video showed an HTS commander’s speech encouraging rebel fighters to “attack your enemies and suffocate them.” Addressing Assad’s forces, the commander said, “You have no choice but to be killed, flee or defect.” Meta removed the content less than 15 minutes after it was posted for violating the Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy. The post was viewed almost 5,000 times.
• In the second case, an image was posted on a public page containing a photograph of HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa and Arabic text of part of a speech he gave the same day. The speech encouraged HTS fighters to “not waste a single bullet except in the chests of your enemy, for Damascus awaits you.” The post was automatically removed within minutes for violating the Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy. The day after, HTS forces took the Syrian capital, Damascus.

By way of the actions taken by Meta in relation to the two cases, the social media giant demoted their reach and visibility. After the users appealed to Meta, the content removal was affirmed, leaving them with the only option to appeal to the Oversight Board.

Having considered the cases, the Oversight Board found, by majority, that removing the content was inconsistent with Meta’s human rights responsibilities. It further found that Meta’s relevant policies must be adjusted to ensure such alignment in the future. As explained in the decision, “The public interest in receiving information that could keep people safe in a rapidly evolving conflict situation, where the regime severely limited information flows, and the low likelihood that sharing this content would lead to additional harm are of particular relevance. The Board notes that in this and any political conflict, communication is truncated, making contextual clues as to the motivations for a post less overt to outsiders. Granting a scaled newsworthiness allowance was warranted.”

A minority of the Board disagreed, finding that the posts’ removal was consistent with Meta’s human rights responsibilities and the Board’s precedent. The justification for this was that both posts are said to have relied on orders to kill, without any commentary and little actionable information to keep civilians safe.

The Board further found that, by channeling communications from a designated group without clear intent to engage in permitted social and political discourse, both posts violate the Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy. It also found that both posts violate the Violence and Incitement policy as they contain clear calls for violence.

The Board further added that: “Meta’s refusal to tell users which organizations and individuals cannot be discussed under its Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy is particularly problematic during armed conflicts, when designated entities may be acting as de facto governing authorities. The policy’s exception for social and political discourse is also insufficiently transparent, as there are significant differences between publicly disclosed information and internal guidance on what is permissible discourse.”

The Board noted that Meta’s moderation in the Syrian conflict may have led to questionable information asymmetries that put users at risk. Meta’s policies allow calls for violence against listed entities but prohibit them against regular militaries.

The Board overturned Meta’s decisions to take down both posts, requiring them to be restored with a newsworthiness allowance.

The Board also recommended Meta to:

• Add a lever to the Crisis Policy Protocol that allows the platform to mitigate information asymmetries its policies may create. This could include policy levers such as: suspending the prohibition on sharing information from designated entities involved in the conflict; suspending strikes or reducing feature limits where content is found violating for unclear intent; providing education to users on how to share information about designated entities in permissible ways. When these policy levers are invoked, the measure must be made public.
• Study, in consultation with impacted stakeholders, how its prohibition on channeling official communications on behalf of a designated entity under the Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy impacts access to information and protection of civilians against violence in armed conflicts.
• Report to the Board about its efforts in the last five years to assess whether and how its Violence and Incitement and Dangerous Organizations and Individuals Community Standards should be modified to account for International Humanitarian Law standards, and set out its near-term future plans in this area.

While the Oversight Board examined the two cases concerning Syria only, the recommendations issued are to address information asymmetries across conflicts and are not limited to the context of Syria only. It is yet unclear how these recommendations will be implemented. The recommendations relating to the study and analysis of policy impact on access to information and protection of civilians against violence in armed conflicts are key to ensuring that any changes are data-driven and respond to the issues at stake.