Pak overturned Meta decision to take down doc on child victims of sexual abuse

Anjali Sharma

GG News Bureau
NEW YORK, 16th May. The independent Oversight Board on Wednesday overturned Mark Zuckerberg run Meta’s decision to take down a documentary posted by Voice of America Urdu, revealed the identities of child victims of sexual abuse and murder from Pakistan in the 1990s.

Oversight Board, an independent body of 22 global human rights and freedom of expression experts from across the political spectrum and the world in a statement said that it found the post did violate the Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Nudity Community Standard, “the majority find that a newsworthiness allowance should have been applied in this case”.

The Board overturned Meta’s decision to take down the content and requires the post to be restored.

“Broadly factual in nature and sensitive to the victims, VOA Urdu’s documentary could have informed public debate on the widespread issue of child sexual abuse, which is underreported in Pakistan,” the Board ruled.

The Board expressed alarm at the length of time it took for Meta to finally make a decision on this content, by which time it had been viewed 21.8 million times, and questions whether Meta’s resources for Urdu-language videos are sufficient.

In January 2022, VOA Urdu posted on its Facebook page an 11-minute documentary about Javed Iqbal, who murdered and sexually abused 100 children in Pakistan in the 1990s.

The documentary, in Urdu, includes disturbing details of the crimes and the perpetrator’s trial.

This post was viewed 21.8 million times and shared 18,000 times.

“Between January 2022 and July 2023, 67 users reported the post. Both automated and human reviews, Meta concluded the content was not violating.

The post was flagged by Meta’s High Risk Early Review Operations system because of its high likelihood of going viral,” the Board said.

Meta’s policy team overturned the original decision to keep the post and removed it for violating the Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Nudity policy.

The majority of the Board found that Meta should have applied the newsworthiness allowance to this content, keeping the post on Facebook.

The experts consulted by the Board confirmed that child sexual abuse is prevalent in Pakistan, but “incidents are underreported”.