Protect Speech During Awareness-Raising Events
4 de noviembre de 2025
The Oversight Board, in analyzing two cases on posts raising awareness about eating disorders during Eating Disorders Awareness Week, finds Meta should strengthen its preparedness for spiked engagement during these periods, when public interest speech could be wrongly removed. The Board is concerned about the potential impact on the visibility of awareness-raising content. Meta’s platforms should allow users to support one another rather than impede their freedom of expression around helpful content. Users need to be able to provide additional context in appeals on whether their content falls into exceptions to the Suicide, Self-Injury and Eating Disorders policy to improve reviews and reduce enforcement errors. The Board overturns Meta's original decision to take down the content in these cases.
About the Cases
In the first case, an Instagram user in the United States posted a photo carousel including photos of the user. The caption shared a personal account of experiencing an eating disorder, a desire to educate people on such disorders and gratitude for support.
In the second case, another Instagram user, also in the United States, shared a photo carousel involving images with text providing advice on how to talk about people perceived to be skinny or underweight. The third image in the carousel advised people not to guess someone’s clothing size and to avoid commenting that people may be wasting away.
Both posts had commonly used awareness-raising hashtags and were shared during Eating Disorders Awareness Week, separately, in 2023 and 2025.
Meta’s automated systems in 2025 identified the post in the first case and the third image in the second case as potentially violating. Human reviewers determined they both violated the Suicide, Self-Injury and Eating Disorders policy. For the first post, the full photo carousel was visible to the reviewer, and for the second post, only the third image was visible. Meta removed the first post entirely and the third image in the second post.
After both users appealed the removals, Meta eventually upheld its decisions. The users then appealed to the Board. When the Board selected these cases, Meta concluded the posts were shared in non-violating contexts and restored them.
Key Findings
The Board finds that the posts did not violate Meta’s Suicide, Self-Injury and Eating Disorders Community Standard. Removing them was also inconsistent with Meta’s human rights responsibilities, as it was not necessary and proportionate to protect public health.
These cases indicate three areas of improvement for fulfillment of Meta’s human rights commitments related to awareness-raising and supportive content: preparedness for global recurring awareness-raising periods; visibility of awareness-raising content; and improvements to appeal review. Meta’s platforms should allow users to support one another rather than impede their freedom of expression around helpful content.
Meta should strengthen its preparedness for awareness-raising weeks as predictable, recurring periods when public interest speech could be wrongly removed. As a global company, Meta should develop a calendar of global awareness-raising periods and use it to adjust enforcement practices.
Adequate tooling is necessary, and users need to be able to provide additional context in their appeals to improve appeal review and reduce enforcement errors. The Board is concerned that, on appeal, secondary reviewers in both cases were unable to complete the review due to content loading failures in internal tooling. While another reviewer had already found both posts to be non-violating, the initial decision to remove both posts was enforced. Meta should provide adequate tooling for holistic initial human review and appeal review across all content types and product features, including photo carousels.
The Oversight Board’s Decision
The Oversight Board overturns Meta's original decision to take down the content.
The Board also recommends that Meta:
- Share the specific measures it takes to prevent overenforcement of content during awareness-raising periods and whether these measures differ from those applied at other times in the enforcement of such content.
The Board reiterates the importance of its previous recommendations on reviewer accuracy-rate assessments, that Meta should:
- Conduct regular assessments on reviewer accuracy rates.
- Improve its transparency reporting by increasing public information on error rates via making this information viewable by country and language for each Community Standard.
Further Information
To read public comments for this case, click here.
