Meta Platforms announced on Tuesday it would lift its comprehensive ban on the word “shaheed,” or martyr in English, following a year-long review by the company’s oversight board.
The word was previously banned under Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals Policy, stating that the use of the word “shaheed” always constituted praise.
The independently operated oversight board started its review because the use of “shaheed” led to more content removals on the company’s platforms than any other single word or phrase, according to Meta. The board completed their review in March and said Meta's policies on the term did not consider its various interpretations, leading to the deletion of content that was not meant to condone violence.
The term “shaheed” usually refers to someone who has died for their religion or a cause. But within the Israel-Palestinian conflict, it commonly refers to terrorists who have attacked Israelis or Jews.
This week Meta acknowledged the findings of the review, and said “its tests have revealed that “removing content when ‘shaheed’ was paired with otherwise violating content captures the most potentially harmful content without disproportionately impacting the voice.”
The company further explained that now they will only remove content with the term if it is paired with “one or more of three signals of violence,” including pictures of weapons or calls for violence.
The oversight board praised the lifting of the ban, saying that Meta's previous policy on the term had resulted in the censorship of many users across its platforms.
'Meta has shown that it has double standards for the Jewish community,' CAM states
Some groups, such as the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), have slammed Meta for accepting the board's decision, according to a CAM press release.
“Unfortunately, while Meta uses a strategy called ‘remove, reduce, inform,’ to deal with problematic or violent content across the board, for violent language directed at the Jewish community it appears to have a completely unique strategy called ‘allow, tolerate and misinform,’” CEO of CAM Sacha Roytman Dratwa stated in the press release. “Once again, Meta has shown that it has double standards for the Jewish community which is facing a global tidal wave of antisemitism.”
According to CAM, Meta failed to engage with any Jewish organizations while investigating this issue.
“Social media platforms have been used as recruitment centers for terrorist organizations over the last few years, and social media companies should be working to prevent rather than assisting this process,” Dratwa said.