This week, the independent Facebook Oversight Board issued a landmark decision calling for the social media giant to reassess how it handles nudity on its platform in a way that will “respect international human rights standards.” This decision comes after the company censored two posts from transgender and nonbinary users that depicted them posing topless.

This isn’t the first time Facebook has gotten in trouble for how it handles nudity. About a decade ago, a group of mothers launched a campaign against the company for censoring images of mothers breastfeeding. Now, the Oversight Board is calling on Facebook to implement a standard policy for users of all genders. However, some experts are skeptical that the company’s content moderation AI will be able to sort through such a delicate issue.

“Context is everything, and algorithms are terrible at context,” digital rights expert Emily Bell told The Guardian. “The interesting question will be the tension over how Meta can create new rules without opening the floodgates to porn, which is why those rules exist in the first place. That ought to be possible, but I’m skeptical of whether it is if content moderation is automated.”

This ruling certainly opens the door to more mistakes from Facebook. However, it’s still a valuable step toward protecting freedom of expression, and that’s a good thing no matter what follows.

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