Facebook Says ‘Death to Khamenei’ Posts Are OK for the Next Two Weeks

Facebook has told Iranian activists that it will allow people to post the words "Death to Khamenei" or feature video of people saying or chanting this phrase for a limited two-week period of time in a bizarre choice that highlights Facebook's power and often confusing content moderation rules.

In the last few days, Iranians in the southwest region of Khuzestan have been taking to the streets over water shortages, sparking anti-government protests in Tehran , fuelled also by a fifth wave of COVID-19 and economic struggles due to American sanctions. Iran's government, as many times before , has responded with violence, leaving several people dead . 

Iranians have been turning to social media platforms like Instagram to document the unrest. But some popular Instagram accounts, such as a group that calls themselves 1500tasvir —or "1500images" after the death toll in the November 2019 protests —have had some of their posts containing videos of the recent protests taken down. 

A group of internet censorship researchers and activists have flagged these takedowns to Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. The company's response was that the posts were correctly removed because they contained calls for "death to Khamenei," the country's ruler Ali Khamenei. Such chants, the company argued in an email viewed by Motherboard, violate Facebook's community standards around incitement of violence .

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