Who should set the standards? Analysing censored Arabic content on Facebook during the Palestine-Israel conflict

Walid Magdy; Hamdy Mubarak; Joni Salminen

doi:10.1145/3706598.3713150

Who should set the standards? Analysing censored Arabic content on Facebook during the Palestine-Israel conflict

Walid Magdy
, Hamdy Mubarak
, Joni Salminen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Abstract

Nascent research on human-computer interaction concerns itself with fairness of content moderation systems. Designing globally applicable content moderation systems requires considering historical, cultural, and socio-technical factors. Inspired by this line of work, we investigate Arab users' perception of Facebook's moderation practices. We collect a set of 448 deleted Arabic posts, and we ask Arab annotators to evaluate these posts based on (a) Facebook Community Standards (FBCS) and (b) their personal opinion. Each post was judged by 10 annotators to account for subjectivity. Our analysis shows a clear gap between the Arabs' understanding of the FBCS and how Facebook implements these standards. The study highlights a need for discussion on the moderation guidelines on social media platforms about who decides the moderation guidelines, how these guidelines are interpreted, and how well they represent the views of marginalised user communities.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	CHI '25
Subtitle of host publication	Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Pages	1-16
Number of pages	16
ISBN (Electronic)	9798400713941
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713150
Publication status	Published - 25 Apr 2025
Event	2025 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - PACIFICO Yokohama, Yokohama, Japan Duration: 26 Apr 2025 → 1 May 2025 https://chi2025.acm.org/

Conference

Conference	2025 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Abbreviated title	CHI 2025
Country/Territory	Japan
City	Yokohama
Period	26/04/25 → 1/05/25
Internet address	https://chi2025.acm.org/

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

censorship
content moderation
Facebook
free speech
Palestine Israel conflict
social media

Access to Document

10.1145/3706598.3713150Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY)

MagdyEtalCHI2025WhoShoudSetTheStandardsFinal published version, 1.03 MBLicence: Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY)

Cite this

@inproceedings{6df14dd14b9f4304ab8b0306066d4ce6,

title = "Who should set the standards? Analysing censored Arabic content on Facebook during the Palestine-Israel conflict",

abstract = "Nascent research on human-computer interaction concerns itself with fairness of content moderation systems. Designing globally applicable content moderation systems requires considering historical, cultural, and socio-technical factors. Inspired by this line of work, we investigate Arab users' perception of Facebook's moderation practices. We collect a set of 448 deleted Arabic posts, and we ask Arab annotators to evaluate these posts based on (a) Facebook Community Standards (FBCS) and (b) their personal opinion. Each post was judged by 10 annotators to account for subjectivity. Our analysis shows a clear gap between the Arabs' understanding of the FBCS and how Facebook implements these standards. The study highlights a need for discussion on the moderation guidelines on social media platforms about who decides the moderation guidelines, how these guidelines are interpreted, and how well they represent the views of marginalised user communities.",

keywords = "censorship, content moderation, Facebook, free speech, Palestine Israel conflict, social media",

author = "Walid Magdy and Hamdy Mubarak and Joni Salminen",

year = "2025",

month = apr,

day = "25",

doi = "10.1145/3706598.3713150",

language = "English",

pages = "1--16",

booktitle = "CHI '25",

publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)",

address = "United States",

note = "2025 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2025 ; Conference date: 26-04-2025 Through 01-05-2025",

url = "https://chi2025.acm.org/",

}

Magdy, W, Mubarak, H & Salminen, J 2025, Who should set the standards? Analysing censored Arabic content on Facebook during the Palestine-Israel conflict. in CHI '25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems., 178, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), pp. 1-16, 2025 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Yokohama, Japan, 26/04/25. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713150

Who should set the standards? Analysing censored Arabic content on Facebook during the Palestine-Israel conflict. / Magdy, Walid; Mubarak, Hamdy; Salminen, Joni.
CHI '25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2025. p. 1-16 178.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

TY - GEN

T1 - Who should set the standards? Analysing censored Arabic content on Facebook during the Palestine-Israel conflict

AU - Magdy, Walid

AU - Mubarak, Hamdy

AU - Salminen, Joni

PY - 2025/4/25

Y1 - 2025/4/25

N2 - Nascent research on human-computer interaction concerns itself with fairness of content moderation systems. Designing globally applicable content moderation systems requires considering historical, cultural, and socio-technical factors. Inspired by this line of work, we investigate Arab users' perception of Facebook's moderation practices. We collect a set of 448 deleted Arabic posts, and we ask Arab annotators to evaluate these posts based on (a) Facebook Community Standards (FBCS) and (b) their personal opinion. Each post was judged by 10 annotators to account for subjectivity. Our analysis shows a clear gap between the Arabs' understanding of the FBCS and how Facebook implements these standards. The study highlights a need for discussion on the moderation guidelines on social media platforms about who decides the moderation guidelines, how these guidelines are interpreted, and how well they represent the views of marginalised user communities.

AB - Nascent research on human-computer interaction concerns itself with fairness of content moderation systems. Designing globally applicable content moderation systems requires considering historical, cultural, and socio-technical factors. Inspired by this line of work, we investigate Arab users' perception of Facebook's moderation practices. We collect a set of 448 deleted Arabic posts, and we ask Arab annotators to evaluate these posts based on (a) Facebook Community Standards (FBCS) and (b) their personal opinion. Each post was judged by 10 annotators to account for subjectivity. Our analysis shows a clear gap between the Arabs' understanding of the FBCS and how Facebook implements these standards. The study highlights a need for discussion on the moderation guidelines on social media platforms about who decides the moderation guidelines, how these guidelines are interpreted, and how well they represent the views of marginalised user communities.

KW - censorship

KW - content moderation

KW - Facebook

KW - free speech

KW - Palestine Israel conflict

KW - social media

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105005709038

U2 - 10.1145/3706598.3713150

DO - 10.1145/3706598.3713150

M3 - Conference contribution

AN - SCOPUS:105005709038

SP - 1

EP - 16

BT - CHI '25

PB - Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

T2 - 2025 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Y2 - 26 April 2025 through 1 May 2025

ER -

Who should set the standards? Analysing censored Arabic content on Facebook during the Palestine-Israel conflict

Abstract

Conference

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Cite this