Meta has an independent Oversight Board that reviews and makes decisions about content. The way this usually works, it seems is that someone challenges the content and the Oversight Board acts as a kind of final court where the content is judged for compatibility with the site’s rules.
Last year, two posts on Meta by Libs of TikTok, aka Chaya Raichik, were challenged and today the Oversight Board issued it’s decision: The posts can stay because these are current topics of public disagreement and there is no clear link between the posts in question and any violence against trans people.
In two posts that include videos in which a transgender woman is confronted for using a women’s bathroom and a transgender athlete wins a track race, the majority of the Board has upheld Meta’s decisions to leave up the content. The Board notes that public debate on policies around transgender peoples’ rights and inclusion is permitted, with offensive viewpoints protected under international human rights law on freedom of expression. In these cases, the majority of the Board found there was not enough of a link between restricting these posts and preventing harm to transgender people, with neither creating a likely or imminent risk of incitement to violence. Nor did the posts represent bullying or harassment. Transgender women and girls’ access to women’s bathrooms and participation in sports are the subjects of ongoing public debate that involves various human rights concerns. It is appropriate that a high threshold be required to suppress such speech.
That’s the summary, but the Board went into more detail on the two different posts and how many times they were reported.
The first case involves a video with a caption, shared on Facebook. A woman films an encounter in which she confronts an identifiable transgender woman for using the women’s bathroom at a university. The caption refers to the transgender woman as a “male student who thinks he’s a girl,” while asking why “this” is tolerated. In the video, the woman asks the transgender woman why she is using the women’s bathroom, challenges her on her gender and states that she “pay[s] a lot of money to be safe in the bathroom.” The transgender woman responds that she is a “trans girl” and that safety in the bathroom is important to her too. The post has been viewed about 43,000 times. Nine users reported the post for hate speech and bullying and harassment, but Meta found the content was not violating. One of those users appealed to the Board.
In the second case, a video shared on Instagram shows a transgender girl winning a girls’ state-level track championship race, with some spectators disapproving of the result. The caption identifies the teenage athlete by name, referring to her as a “boy who thinks he’s a girl,” as well as using male pronouns. The post has been viewed about 140,000 times. One user reported the content for hate speech and bullying and harassment, but Meta determined the content was not violating. The user appealed Meta’s decision to the Board.
The specific posts are not linked or identified and neither are the people who reported them. However, in this case we know who reported the second video about the trans athlete. It was trans activist Alejandra Caraballo who made a thread about it on Bluesky.
You’re not supposed to know what post it is exactly but I do know because I’m the person who reported it. While the board obfuscates what this was about, they clearly knew the history of this account inciting dozens of bomb threats along with violent imagery in her comments.
— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) April 22, 2025 at 9:29 PM
These people on the oversight board are spineless amoral cowards running cover for a fundamentally evil company. They can lie to protect their conscience but the reality is they’re enabling horrific violence against vulnerable minorities.
— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) April 22, 2025 at 9:31 PM
My post at the time it was selected. bsky.app/profile/esqu…
— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) April 22, 2025 at 9:32 PM
This was the post.
— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) April 22, 2025 at 9:41 PM
Here was my full appeal.
— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) April 22, 2025 at 9:55 PM
Caraballo says it took “personal lobbying” to get this taken up in the first place.
This is an unprecedented look at the appeals process for the oversight board. This stuff usually isn’t public. It took personal lobbying to get this case taken up. Despite that, the board clearly put politics ahead of protecting children. Par for the course for meta.
— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) April 22, 2025 at 10:02 PM
Obviously that effort did not pay off in this case. The thread ends with Caraballo calling everyone at Meta “evil” and hoping the company “burns to the ground.”
Anyways, I hope meta as a company burns to the ground. Nothing of value will be lost. Everyone from Zuckerberg on down are fundamentally evil people who will incite genocides as long as it increases shareholder value.
— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) April 22, 2025 at 10:03 PM
I’m guessing no one is going to report Caraballo for violent language and that’s fine. There is a line between using hyperbolic language to make a point and actual incitement of violence. In fact, that’s the same line that Meta just concluded Libs of TikTok did not cross despite Caraballo’s efforts.
The Washington Post reports that this decision wasn’t supposed to be released until next week but Meta seems to have rushed it out after the Post started asking questions about the outcome.
The Oversight Board planned to release the gender identity case ruling among several others next week but moved up the announcement to early Wednesday morning after a Washington Post reporter requested comment earlier this week on the pending ruling…
Even before Wednesday’s ruling, the board’s judgment on the gender identity cases had become a lightning rod among social media policy watchers, attracting scores of comments about how the group should rule, including from prominent LGTBQ+ advocacy groups and well-known conservative critics…
“This ruling tells LGBTQ people all we need to know about Meta’s attitude towards its LGBTQ users — anti-LGBTQ hate, and especially anti-trans hate is welcome on Meta’s platforms,” Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO of the LGBTQ+ activist group GLAAD, said in a statement. “This is not ‘free speech,’ this is harassment that dehumanizes a vulnerable group of people.”
But as a legal advisor for Independent Women’s Law Center pointed out, this is exactly how free speech is supposed to work.
“This isn’t hate speech,” said Beth Parlato, a senior legal adviser for Independent Women’s Law Center, a conservative group that advocates for restrictions on trans people’s participation in sports and their presence in bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity.
“More than half of the country believes there are two sexes — male and female — and we should not be quieted or censored from discussing any issues that involve transgenders,” she added.
Meta made the right decision in this case. The fact that trans activists are angry that the company refused to silence their opponents tells you a lot about how this would all work if they were in charge.
