As the 2024 US presidential election looms on the horizon, attention is once again being paid to Facebook and its handling of misinformation. The first stress test of the company’s policies was applied this week by the Facebook Oversight Board, which examined the case of a heavily manipulated video of Joe Biden that painted him as a pedophile. According to the Board, the video should be allowed to remain posted on Facebook under the company’s own rules. However, the Board also said that these policies are “incoherent” and require a complete overhaul to address the scale of misinformation on the platform.

According to the Board, Facebook’s current misinformation policy is extremely limited to only deal with content altered using artificial intelligence. However, it doesn’t account for any other kind of altered media, nor does it label content that has been manipulated.

“As it stands, the policy makes little sense,” Oversight Board Co-Chair Michael McConnell said in a statement. “It bans altered videos that show people saying things they do not say, but does not prohibit posts depicting an individual doing something they did not do. It only applies to video created through AI, but lets other fake content off the hook.”

Of course, the Oversight Board’s recommendations are nonbinding, so Facebook could always choose to ignore this advice. However, this problem is only going to get worse in the coming year, so the company would be wise to be proactive and do something sooner rather than later.

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