By Jeff Horwitz

Facebook Inc.'s independent content-oversight board issued its first five rulings Thursday, overturning four instances where it found the company unfairly infringed upon users' speech on the platform or misapplied vague rules on content that could cause imminent harm.

Among the board's decisions were a determination that Facebook's algorithms were wrong to remove a post about breast cancer identification that featured a woman's nipple, and a finding that Facebook had been too strict in removing a French user's post praising hydroxychloroquine, a once widely discussed treatment for Covid-19 that medical authorities have generally found not to be effective.

The group also said Facebook erred in taking down a post from a user in Myanmar with photos of a drowned Syrian Kurd child with text that said Muslims were too focused on insults of the Prophet Muhammad and appeared unconcerned about the treatment of Muslim Uighurs in China. The post also stated that there was something psychologically wrong with Muslim men and "seems to imply the child may have grown up to be an extremist," the board wrote.

Oversight-board members determined the post didn't reach the level of hate speech that justified removal, despite Myanmar's recent history of social-media-fueled violence against Muslims -- which the United Nations has described as an example of ethnic cleansing.

The oversight board's decision was faulted by a group of prominent Facebook critics who have dubbed themselves "The Real Facebook Oversight Board" as well as Muslim civil-rights organizations.

Facebook's independent oversight board, created and funded by Facebook through an endowment, was created to tackle Facebook's thorniest content-moderation issues, and the company has pledged to abide by the panel's decisions. The group, which features 20 journalists, lawyers and former politicians from around the world, is also set to determine later this year whether Facebook erred in suspending former President Donald Trump from its platform.

So far, the panel has only been given the ability to determine whether content that has been taken down should be restored -- not if Facebook should be removing live posts or videos.

Thursday, the content-oversight board determined the removal of the post with the nipple -- which Facebook has already reinstated -- indicates possible overreliance by Facebook on algorithms to police content, said Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the former prime minister of Denmark and a member of the board.

"It became very clear to us that that was part of the problem -- had they had human moderators, I don't think this would have been taken down from Instagram," she said. Facebook has recently been moving toward more expansive use of algorithmic content moderation.

The board has said it hopes to gain that ability -- but hasn't yet been provided the technical means by Facebook to do so. Ms. Thorning-Schmidt also said the board hopes to be able to consider matters in the future on how Facebook's algorithms promoted content to users.

On the post referencing hydroxychloroquine, the board said Facebook's removal decision was incorrect because the content didn't encourage people to take the drug without a prescription and merely criticized government policy. Facebook initially determined the post contained risk of offline harm as a result of Covid-19 misinformation.

"Facebook had not demonstrated the post would rise to the level of imminent harm, as required by its own rule in the Community Standards," the board concluded. It also called for Facebook to create new rules around health-related misinformation and increase transparency around such decisions.

Facebook has 30 days to respond to recommendations made by the board on larger policy questions. Jen Broxmeyer, who works on governance issues for Facebook, told The Wall Street Journal after the announcement that Facebook would consider such broader guidance from the board and likely accept some of its advice -- but noted that only the board's rulings on specific pieces of content are binding.

Write to Jeff Horwitz at Jeff.Horwitz@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

01-28-21 1440ET