The Case of a Facebook Content Moderation Debacle in Greece

Abstract

This chapter first discusses how Facebook’s content moderation process works, along with Facebook’s policies on Dangerous Individuals and Organizations, which were allegedly violated in the case we examine in this chapter; second, we briefly describe necessary contextual information regarding 17 November and Koufontinas’s actions, as well as what sparked the controversy presented here. Our case study consists of several instances of content removals and account restrictions of Greek journalists that were covering protests and were participating in the public debate around Koufontinas's hunger strike. All examined content moderation decisions took place on Facebook during the same period, mostly between February and April 2021. Last, we conduct a case-by-case analysis to deduce if the content had indeed violated any platform policy to extrapolate what may have happened in this case study and what socio-political stakes exist with the current content governance. Consequently, we argue that this chapter further demonstrates platforms’ preference to proactively err on the side of more content removal rather than letting politically controversial content on its services; this also further strengthens the argument that platforms are not neutral intermediaries and are increasingly taking editorial decisions.