Determine Whether Disagreement with Facebook’s Moderation Is Cultural or General

Determine whether the observed disagreement between Arab annotators’ judgments and Facebook’s moderation of Arabic posts collected during the May 2021 Palestine–Israel conflict stems primarily from cultural differences between Arab and non-Arab perspectives or reflects a broader user–platform disconnect; specifically, collect and analyze comparative moderation judgments from non-Arab participants on the same posts to isolate culturally specific versus universal factors in interpreting the Facebook Community Standards.

Background

The paper found substantial disagreement between Arab annotators and Facebook’s moderation decisions during the Palestine–Israel conflict, with most deleted posts judged not to violate Facebook’s Community Standards by the annotators. This raises questions about whether the disagreement is rooted in cultural interpretations or reflects broader issues in how Facebook applies its standards.

The authors explicitly note a key limitation: without comparative data from non-Arab participants, it is not possible to determine if the observed disagreement is specific to Arab cultural interpretations of the Facebook Community Standards or indicative of a more general mismatch between users and Facebook’s moderation practices.