Meta's Oversight Board is fine with leaving manipulated content on Facebook

Apparently misleading protest videos are welcome to stay on Facebook now. Meta's Oversight Board has ruled that the company was right to leave up a manipulated video that made footage of a Serbian protest look like it took place in Holland and was in support of Rodrigo Duterte, former president of the Philippines. A user reshared it within days of Duterte's March 2025 extradition to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Netherlands.

The original video gained additional audio and captions, including chants of "Duterte" and the song Bayan Ko — which accompanied many Filipino 1980s anti-martial law protests — played in tagalog. About 100,000 users viewed the manipulated video, alongside "hundreds" of shares.

Meta's automated systems flagged the video as potential misinformation and lowered its visibility for non-US users. However, despite it being added to the fact-checking queue, the "high volume of posts" meant it was never reviewed. Fact-checkers in the Philippines checked some similar viral videos and labeled them as false. It reached the attention of the Oversight Board only after a separate Facebook user reported this video and appealed it when Meta left the content up.

But the Oversight Board now says it agrees with Meta's decision to leave a completely inaccurate protest video public. It just notes that Meta should have given the video a "High-Risk" label "because it contained a digitally altered, photorealistic video with a high risk of deceiving the public during a significant public event." How something with that description merits staying up on Facebook is very unclear.

The Oversight Board further states that Meta should have prioritized a video of this nature getting fact-checked. Moving forward, it recommends that Meta create a separate fact-checking queue for any content of a similar nature to what has been fact-checked in that market — and that fact-checkers should have improved tools to more swiftly find misleading viral media. It also wants Meta to better describe its labels for manipulated media so users can understand the criteria.

Meta notably suspended its fact-checking program in the US in January, opting instead for Community Notes. However, it's now looking at expanding that system other countries and has asked the Oversight Board for advice on locations.