Meta will change its policy around the Arabic word “shaheed”, which is among the most moderated words on the company’s social media apps — Facebook and Instagram.

The Mark Zuckerberg-led company announced in an update to the oversight board that it would lift its blanket ban on the word.

The board had earlier criticised the company for a “blanket ban” on the word, which is usually translated as “martyr” in English.

It said: “In the board’s view, Meta’s approach to moderating the word ‘shaheed’ is overbroad, and disproportionately restricts freedom of expression and civic discourse.”

The board, which makes content moderation decisions on Facebook and Instagram, in the form of “platform self-governance”, said Meta’s “presumption that referring to a designated individual as ‘shaheed’ always constituted ‘praise’ under the Dangerous
Organisations and Individuals policy resulted in a blanket ban”.

The board said the company didn’t consider “linguistic complexity” and the “many uses” of the word. “This over-enforcement disproportionately affects Arabic speakers and speakers of other languages that have ‘shaheed’ loanwords,” the board noted.

“Initial results from our assessment indicate that continuing to remove content when ‘shaheed’ is paired with otherwise violating content — or when the three signals of violence outlined by the board are present — captures the most potentially harmful content without disproportionality impacting voice,” Meta said.

The board, which functions independently but is funded by Meta, started
its review last year because the word accounted for more content removals on the company’s platforms than any other single word or phrase.

Currently, Meta treats the word “shaheed” as explicit praise “when used in reference to a designated individual”, and “we remove this content when we’re aware of it”. The
company said it does not remove the word “on its own or when used to reference non-designated individuals”.