“From the River to the Sea” Should Not Be Automatically Removed from Meta’s Platforms, Oversight Board Says
September 4, 2024
- Use of the phrase, often posted in solidarity with the Palestinian people, surged on Meta’s platforms, with tens of thousands of additional posts following Oct. 7.
- The Board calls on Meta to restore and improve data access for journalists and researchers after the company discontinued CrowdTangle, and to improve its monitoring of attacks against individuals based on protected characteristics, such as religion.
Three pieces of content containing the phrase “From the River to the Sea” did not violate Meta’s Community Standards, and the company was right not to remove them, the Oversight Board said on Wednesday. In its new decisions, Board found the content contained contextual signs of solidarity with the Palestinians and did not call for violence or exclusion, or glorify or refer to Hamas, designated by Meta as a Tier 1 dangerous organization.
Extensive research and public consultation showed that the phrase has many meanings and is used by people with different intentions.
The phrase has a long history as part of the Palestinian protest movement but has also been included in the 2017 Hamas charter, linking it to acts of violence against Israelis and the state of Israel. It likewise appeared in the 1977 platform of Israel’s ruling Likud Party and has been linked to statements of the current administration opposing equal rights of Palestinians.
Due to the phrase’s multiple meanings the Board determined that its use could not, by itself and regardless of context, be necessarily understood as harmful, violent or discriminatory.
“There has been an unacceptable and deeply disturbing rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia on- and offline, with widely reported rises in assault, vandalism and harassment. Social media companies have a clear responsibility to ensure they do not fan the flames of hate,” said Oversight Board co-chair Pamela San Martin.
“But context is crucial. Simply removing political speech is not a solution. There needs to be room for debate, especially during times of crisis and conflict.
“The real question now is how much legitimate political content Meta is taking down in error and how effective it is at blocking harmful content from reaching people’s feeds? The reality is that without better access to Meta’s data, it is hard to know. Instead of increasing transparency, Meta has closed down CrowdTangle and restricted access to its replacement, the Content Library. We strongly urge Meta to rethink its approach and more fully support independent monitoring."
Following the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel and the subsequent Israeli military campaign in Gaza, English-language posts containing the phrase “From the River to the Sea” saw a fiftyfold increase on Facebook in a six-month period, according to independent analysis commissioned by the Board. Arabic content using the phrase doubled during this time.
Although some hashtags were more critical of the Israeli military, research did not identify any posts explicitly calling for violence against Jewish people or support for the Hamas terrorist attacks. However, such analysis was limited to public content that Meta allowed to appear on its platforms, not content removed for violating the rules.
“Only by increasing data access can we begin to truly understand what is going on and work on establishing trust,” said San Martin. “With CrowdTangle, Meta has long been an industry leader in transparency. While we are hopeful that the new Meta Content Library will continue this legacy, the Board is concerned about the broader impact for researchers and journalists.”
“We call on Meta to ensure any new tools offer the same or improved functionality and to quickly provide access to all organisations and journalists who were previously eligible. This is as crucial for conflicts as it is for elections and all other major crises around the world.”
Read the decision in full
***Notes to Editors***
Commissioned research found that in the six months before the October 7 terror attacks, there were more uses of the phrase “From the River to the Sea” in Arabic than in English, on Facebook (1,600 versus 1,400, respectively). In the six months that followed October 7, up to March 23, 2024, the use of the phrase in English rose significantly compared with Arabic (82,082 versus 2,880, respectively). This only contained information that was published, and not content that was removed by Meta for alleged violations of its Community Standards.
The Board’s decision and deliberations drew heavily on public comments and expert analysis. More than 2,400 people and organisations, with a wide range of opinions, contributed views to the Board. On August 14, Meta shut down CrowdTangle, a research, analysis and transparency tool widely used by researchers and journalists, replacing it with a new tool, known as the Content Library.
In 2022, in response to an independent human rights review requested by the Board, Meta began to assess the feasibility of developing a “mechanism to track the prevalence of content that attacks people based on specific protected characteristics (e.g., antisemitic, Islamophobic, homophobic). Last year, Meta announced that it was still working on this issue. As of now, there have been no public indications that this work has been completed.
The phrase "From the River to the Sea" refers to the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which today covers the entirety of the State of Israel and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories, and holds different meanings depending on the context and speaker. For some, it represents Palestinian aspirations for self-determination and equal rights, while for others, particularly in the Jewish and pro-Israel community, it is seen as a call for the destruction of Israel and the removal of Jewish people from Palestine.
In Germany, the Ministry of the Interior designated the phrase a slogan associated with Hamas, with Meta confirming to the Board they had removed some references to the phrase following requests by German government agencies. However, while authorities in places like the US and UK have denounced the phrase, they have not adopted a ban.
The content in the three cases reviewed by the Board included:
- A comment on a video encouraging others to “speak up” and featuring a “#ceasefire” hashtag, with the user’s comment also containing “#PalestineWillBeFree” and “#DefundIsrael” hashtags, as well as heart emojis in the colors of the Palestinian flag.
- A visual representation, seemingly a generated image of floating watermelon slices that form the words of the phrase along with “Palestine will be free,” with no additional caption or visual signals. (Watermelon is a symbol of Palestinian solidarity, with the same colors as the Palestinian flag.)
- A post expressly stating solidarity with Palestinian families, of all faiths, fighting to survive.
