Add Tools to Stop Policies Causing Information Imbalances During Conflict

2 अकतूबर 2025

The Oversight Board calls on Meta to add to its tools for moderating content in armed conflict to mitigate information asymmetries its policies may create between different parties to conflicts. The Board emphasizes that civilians in rapidly evolving conflicts utilize social media in a manner distinct from non-conflict situations, to quickly share information that can help keep people safe. The impact of prohibitions on channeling communications from an entity designated under Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy on people and their protection against violence needs to be studied. The Board has called on Meta to restore two posts, with newsworthiness allowances, in which users shared content from leaders of the organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), shortly before the toppling of the Assad regime in Syria.

About the Cases

In late 2024, two Facebook users in Syria posted content related to HTS, an organization designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council, which led the offensive that overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

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. It was viewed almost 5,000 times.

In the second case, an image was posted on a public page in December 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 Community Standard. The day after, HTS forces took the Syrian capital, Damascus. 

Meta prevented the accounts from going live and demoted page reach and visibility. The posting users appealed, and Meta confirmed the content’s removal. The users both appealed to the Board. The company later said the posts also violated its Violence and Incitement policy.

Key Findings

The majority of the Board finds that removing the content was inconsistent with Meta’s human rights responsibilities, and Meta’s relevant policies must be adjusted to ensure such alignment in the future. 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 disagrees, finding the posts’ removal consistent with Meta’s human rights responsibilities and the Board’s precedent. Both posts relay orders to kill, without any commentary and little actionable information to keep civilians safe.

The Board finds 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 finds that both posts violate the Violence and Incitement policy as they contain clear calls for violence.

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.

Meta enforcing a non-public yet fully operative policy since February 2025 on how people can refer to or share communications from President al-Sharaa in his official capacity does not meet the requirements of legality. Users must be aware of policies like this one to ensure they can understand how they may exercise their expressive rights within Meta’s rules.

The Board notes 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. This is regardless of either side’s conduct.

The Oversight Board’s Decision

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

The Board also recommends that Meta:

• 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.

Further Information

To read public comments for this case, click here.

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