Facebook rightly deleted a video about Père Fouettard last year. The user, who inserted the video, appealed against a decision to delete it, but a platform appeals committee ruled in favor of Facebook. According to this Oversight Board as it is called, the grimaced character representing Father Fouettard was a ‘dangerously racist stereotype’.
The 17-second video, inserted on December 5 of last year, shows a little girl who meets Saint-Nicolas accompanied by two Fathers Fouettards. Facebook deleted the video a day later, calling it ‘hate speech’. Facebook believes that the videos and photos of Père Fouettard can only be posted to condemn this practice or to inform people, which the appeals committee approves. Internal controllers, however, qualify Père Fouettard ‘as a cultural tradition shared by many Dutch people who see no racist motive in it’.
The Oversight Board did not make its decision unanimously. A minority found it offensive that white people make themselves up in black (‘blackface’), but that it was not automatically harmful and that ‘unpleasant’ things should also be able to be inserted on Facebook.
Facebook created the Oversight Board last year. Its members are a sort of tribunal to judge whether Facebook has applied its rules correctly. The committee has twenty members, including former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Nobel Prize winner Tawakkol Karman. We do not know the opinion of each member in this case dedicated to Father Fouettard.
The 17-second video, inserted on December 5 of last year, shows a little girl who meets Saint-Nicolas accompanied by two Fathers Fouettards. Facebook deleted the video a day later, calling it ‘hate speech’. Facebook believes that the videos and photos of Père Fouettard can only be posted to condemn this practice or to inform people, which the appeals committee approves. Internal controllers, however, qualify Père Fouettard as ‘a cultural tradition shared by many Dutch people who see no racist motive in it.’ The Oversight Board did not take its decision unanimously. A minority thought it was offensive that white people make themselves up in black (‘blackface’), but that it was not automatically harmful and that ‘unpleasant’ things should also be able to be put on Facebook. Facebook created the Oversight Board on Facebook. last year. Its members are a sort of tribunal to judge whether Facebook has applied its rules correctly. The committee has twenty members, including former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Nobel Prize winner Tawakkol Karman. We do not know the opinion of each member in this case dedicated to Father Fouettard.
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