Oversight Board Selects Case on a Comment Related to the January 2021 Protests in Russia

Today, the Oversight Board selected a case appealed by a Facebook user regarding a comment they made on a post containing pictures, a video and text about the January 2021 protests in support of Alexei Navalny held in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The commenter called another user a “common and cowardly bot” (as translated from Russian) over comments the other user had made against the ongoing protests.

Facebook took down this content for violating our policy on bullying and harassment, as laid out in our Community Standards. For private individuals we “remove content that’s meant to degrade or shame” and in some instances we require self-reporting, as was done in this case, so we can better understand if the individual is feeling bullied or harassed.

We will implement the board’s decision once it has finished deliberating, and we will update this post accordingly. Please see the board’s website for the decision when they issue it.