Meta’s independent Oversight Board has called on the company to change things up regarding its rules around the presentation of nudity as it relates to transgender and non-binary people, in particular. This sudden call resulted from a new ruling over the removal of two Instagram posts that featured models with bare chests. The case relates to two separate posts from the same user, both of which featured images of a transgender/non-binary couple who ‘bore everything out’ with just their nipples covered.
The post was made to raise awareness about a member of the couple who was seeking to undergo top surgery, so while the intention was not malicious, Meta’s automated systems, and subsequent human review flagged both posts as violating Meta’s rules around sexual solicitation.
An Interesting Conflict
The user appealed the decision to the Oversight Board, and Meta did restore the posts. However, the Board says that the case underlines a key flaw within Meta’s current guidelines relating to transgender and non-binary users. The Board notes that Meta’s original removal of these posts was due to a flawed interpretation of its own regulations, which mainly boils down to how they were written. To note further, the Board says that Meta’s enforcement of its nudity rules is often ‘convoluted and poorly defined’, potentially resulting in greater barriers to expression for women, trans, and gender non-binary people across its apps.
The Board has recommended that Meta update its approach to managing nudity on its platforms by defining clearer criteria to govern its adult nudity and sexual activity policy. It’s an interesting ruling that’s more akin to modern interpretations and depictions of nudity, and the significance of the message that such depictions can convey. With societal attitudes shifting in this area, it’s important that Meta also look to align its policies with these evolving perspectives, broadening acceptance, and furthering these key conversations.
The Oversight Board continues to be a valuable project for Meta’s policy enforcement efforts – a good example of how external regulation could work for social media apps and decisions. Likewise, this is what Meta has been pushing for lately, with the company even calling on global governments to develop overarching policies and standards, to which all social platforms would have to adhere. That would take a significant portion of the complex and sensitive moderation decisions out of the hands of internal leaders, ensuring that all platforms operate on a level playing field.
The Wrap
As a whole, it does seem that this would be the better way to go, although developing universal standards for such is anything but simple – it’ll take heaps of cooperation and consensus. Is such a thing even possible? Well, yes, but it is very difficult. The Oversight Board’s experiment underlines that there is a need for internal checking to ensure that platform policies evolve with public expectations.
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