On Thursday, U.S. information technology giant Meta Platforms’ oversight board began soliciting public opinions about a post criticizing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on its Threads platform.
The post was deleted once due to violent expressions, but Meta later restored it, concluding that the post contained rhetorical language and that the deletion was a mistake.
Still, the board of academics and other experts is seeking public comments to consider how to handle posts on political topics and reflect public views in its planned proposals to the company.
This is the first time the board will examine a case related to Threads.
Meta does not proactively recommend political content on Threads for pages not followed by users.
The board is asking for opinions on how its policy on political content affects access to information and political speech, not on whether Meta’s response to the post in question was right or wrong.
The post criticized Kishida over a high-profile money scandal within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in which some lawmakers of his faction failed to include part of revenues from political fundraising parties in financial statements.
The post was made in reply to another post, which contained a screenshot of a news article in Japanese. The person who posted the reply used the phrase “drop dead” and referred to Kishida as a tax evader, according to the board.
A Meta human reviewer deleted the reply post based on internal guidelines prohibiting calls for death directed at heads of state as a violation of Meta’s rules against violence and incitement.
The user filed a complaint with the board against the deletion, saying it was an infringement of their freedom of speech. The board has found that Meta’s decision was wrong.