Facebook’s new oversight board has overturned the tech giant’s decision to censor a post promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as a treatment for COVID-19. The social media platform removed the post last year, saying that it caused a “risk of offline harm” due to “misinformation.”
The corporation’s oversight board was created last year to act as a kind of supreme court adjudicating difficult censorship cases. The board’s website states its role is to use “its independent judgment to support people’s right to free expression and ensure those rights are being adequately respected.”
Furthermore, the “board’s decisions to uphold or reverse Facebook’s content decisions,” the description says, “will be binding, meaning Facebook will have to implement them.”
The case in question originated in France in which a Facebook user criticized his government’s refusal “to authorize hydroxychloroquine combined with azithromycin for use against COVID-19.” In doing so, the individual stated, “‘[Didier] Raoult’s cure’ is being used elsewhere to save lives,” and also “questioned what society had to lose by allowing doctors to prescribe in an emergency a ‘harmless drug’ when the first symptoms of COVID-19 appear.”