Facebook on Tuesday, September 21, restored a post satirizing Toni Gonzaga-Soriano’s interview with Bongbong Marcos (BBM), after reviewing the takedown.

The post was originally taken down on Friday, September 17.

The post shows Adolf Hitler seated on the interviewee’s chair opposite Gonzaga-Soriano, captioned, “Next On Toni Talks: The Dictator Series.” 

The takedown notice had said: “You can’t go live or advertise for 30 days. This is because you previously posted something that didn’t follow our community standards. This post goes against our standards on dangerous individuals and organizations, so only you can see it. Repeatedly violating our Community Standards can cause further account restrictions. If you think we’ve made a mistake, you can disagree with the decision.” 

Below is the post:

Rappler also featured the post in an article compiling online posts that were against the Toni-BBM interview.

Around the time of the article’s posting, the Hitler with Gonzaga-Soriano Facebook post was taken down.

The user has a few other posts in his “dictator series” including North Korea’s Kim Jong-un:

In a similar incident, Facebook-owned Instagram took down a similar post mentioning Hitler.

An Instagram user said on Gonzaga-Soriano’s Instagram page, on a September 5 post celebrating Toni Talks’ 4-million subscriber milestone: “Marcos apologist! You are an enabler of historical revisionism! It’s like inviting a Hitler kin to a talk show so that he can sing praises for all good things Hitler has done. Nevermind the millions of people he has killed.”

Below is the post.

The Instagram user believes seeing an Instagram notification showing her that her post was reported. The user wasn’t able to take a screenshot of the takedown alert. 

The comment was among many others on Gonzaga-Soriano’s Facebook page criticizing the celebrity, along with some more supportive ones.

Some users have also been urging celebrities Angel Locsin, Bianca-Gonzalez Intal, and broadcast journalist Karen Davila – all of whom had made congratulatory posts for Gonzaga-Soriano’s YouTube milestone – to give their stand on the BBM interview.

Gonzalez-Intal later addressed these demands; while Angel Locsin on the day of the anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law did the same in her #MarcosIsNotAHero post.

Facebook has no official comment on these takedowns, and for the Facebook post, its restoration.

Facebook uses both automatic content filters, and human moderators. 

The Facebook takedown appeared to have been an automated one but was unable to differentiate between a potentially dangerous post promoting Nazism and Adolf Hitler, and a post that uses Hitler and swastika Nazi symbol within the context of a post satirizing a public figure’s public actions. 

This reveals a potential gap in Facebook’s automated content moderation system.

Some users in the comments thread of a post promoting this article noted that the automated Facebook filter can be quite strict on the posting of Hitler and Nazi imagery, sometimes also taking down posts that are not meant to promote the extremely dangerous ideology.

Prior to its restoration, the Facebook user made an appeal to the platform through its regular on-platform methods, including making a submission to to Facebook’s Oversight Board.

The 19-member Facebook’s Oversight Board reviews content appeals, but it is known for being very selective in cases, and selects them depending on the potential future Facebook policies that tackling a certain piece of content would produce, among other factors.

That also means that, with Oversight Board requests, quickly reinstating something that has been taken down could take a while, if it ever does get put back up again.

The board was founded in 2018, officially started reviews in late 2020, and handed out its first decisions in January 2021.

Among the board’s biggest reviews to date is the issue on the reinstatement of Donald Trump’s Facebook account. Trump’s account had been suspended indefinitely after the January 6 US Capitol riots – which the board upheld in May 2021 but also asked Facebook for a more definite time of suspension.

Facebook, a month later, following the Board’s recommendations, announced in June that the Trump suspensions for his Facebook and Instagram accounts would last at least until January 2023. – Rappler.com