Facebook does not have to remove a clearly misleading protest video, according to a new ruling from Meta’s Oversight Board. The body decided the company made the right call by keeping a manipulated clip online, even though it tricked viewers about a major political event.
The controversy centers on a video that actually showed a protest in Serbia. However, an editor manipulated the footage to make it appear shot in Holland in support of Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines. A user shared the fake clip just days after Duterte’s extradition to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands in March 2025. The creator added fake audio, including chants of “Duterte” and Bayan Ko, a song famous during the 1980s Filipino anti-martial law protests.
The edit was convincing enough to garner about 100,000 views and hundreds of shares. Meta’s automated systems actually flagged the video as potential misinformation and lowered its visibility for users outside the U.S. However, the system was overwhelmed. Because of the “high volume of posts,” human fact-checkers never reviewed this specific video, even though checkers in the Philippines had already labeled similar viral clips as false.
The Oversight Board only got involved after a user reported the video and appealed when Meta refused to take it down. Surprisingly, the Board agreed with Meta’s decision to keep the inaccurate video public. They stated that instead of removal, Meta should have applied a “High-Risk” label because the content was “digitally altered” and likely to deceive the public.
To prevent this from happening again, the Board recommended that Meta improve its tools. They suggested creating a separate priority list for content that resembles already-debunked lies so checkers can catch them faster. This comes as Meta shifts its strategy; the company suspended its professional fact-checking program in the U.S. this past January in favor of “Community Notes” and is now looking to expand that system to other countries.
