Facebook is under fire again for its content moderation practices, this time for how it deals with offensive posts about the trans community. This week, the Facebook Oversight Board reversed a company decision to leave up a post that seemingly called for transgender people to kill themselves.

The post, originally uploaded in April 2023, was reported 12 times by 11 different users. However, only two of the reports were prioritized for human review, and those were found not to be in violation of the company’s ban on content encouraging suicide or self-harm. Thankfully, the Board stepped in to reverse this decision and urged Facebook to do a better job of accurately policing hate speech. However, prominent advocates say the social media giant must go even further.

“This new Oversight Board ruling presents a vitally important opportunity for Meta,” president and CEO of GLAAD Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement. “The company must address this urgent and terrifying phenomenon of violent anti-trans hate content. The weaponization of lies targeting historically marginalized groups has a long and terrible history and the spread of such disgusting bigotry should be vehemently and immediately denounced by Meta as not in alignment with their company values.”

Of course, Facebook can’t fight hate speech one post at a time, so the company really does need to find a way to better detect this content at a higher level and make sure it doesn’t spread.

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