On Thursday, the supervisory board of US information technology giant Meta Platforms began seeking public opinion on a post criticizing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on his Threads platform.
The post was removed once due to violent expressions, but Meta later reinstated it and concluded that the post contained rhetorical language and that the removal was a mistake.
Still, the board is seeking public comment from academics and other experts to consider how to handle posts on political topics and reflect public opinion in its planned proposals to the company.
This is the first time the board is investigating a matter related to Threads.
Meta does not proactively recommend political content on Threads for pages that are not followed by users.
The board is asking for opinions on how its political content policy affects access to information and political speech, not on whether Meta’s response to the post in question was right or wrong.
The post criticized Kishida for a high-profile money scandal within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, with some lawmakers from his group failing to include some of the income from political fundraising parties in their financial statements.
The message was posted in response to another message, which contained a screenshot of a news article in Japanese. The person who posted the reply used the phrase “death dropping” and called Kishida a tax evader, the board said.
A human Meta reviewer removed the reply message based on internal guidelines that ban calls for death against heads of state as a violation of Meta’s rules against violence and incitement.
The user filed a complaint with the board against the removal, saying it was an infringement on their freedom of expression. The board determined that Meta’s decision was wrong.
