By Rozina Sabur,

Deputy US Editor

Facebook’s oversight board will investigate an “altered” clip that called Joe Biden a “sick paedophile” as part of a review into the company’s deepfake policies. 

The clip showed the US president placing an “I voted” sticker on his 18-year-old granddaughter Natalie’s chest last year.

The original footage was taken during the November 2022 midterm elections but selectively edited to remove all context so it appeared Mr Biden inappropriately touched a young woman’s breast in public.

The oversight board at Meta, Facebook’s parent company, announced on Tuesday that it was reviewing one particular post involving the video.

It is formed of more than 20 academics and policy experts including the former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and Denmark’s former Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

Known as Facebook’s “Supreme Court”, its role is to rule on contentious decisions to allow or remove content. Its decisions are binding on the company.

The post under review features an “altered” clip of Mr Biden, which loops to repeat the moment when his “hand makes contact with his granddaughter’s chest”, the board said.

Its accompanying caption brands Mr Biden “a sick paedophile” and calls the people who voted for him “mentally unwell”.  

Verified footage of Mr Biden’s exchange with his granddaughter showed there was no inappropriate contact.

A frame-by-frame analysis by the Associated Press, which captured the incident, showed Natalie Biden patting a voting sticker onto her grandfather’s chest with her hand.

In return, the president took a sticker and asked his granddaughter: “Which side do you want it on?”

She gestured to her chest and her grandfather placed it high on her chest, near her neckline.

The pair then both leaned in, and Mr Biden kissed her on the cheek.

Thomas Hughes, director of the Oversight Board Administration, said that while the case involved Mr Biden, it also touched “on the much broader issue of how manipulated media might impact elections in every corner of the world”.

He said the post raised “complex questions” concerning Meta’s human rights responsibilities to video content “altered to create a misleading impression of a public figure.”

While the altered footage has been around for months, the post under review was shared in May 2023. It had been viewed fewer than 30 times as of early September.

Another Facebook user reported the post to Meta, which decided not to remove the content.

It determined the video didn’t warrant removal because its manipulated media standard only applies to videos generated by artificial intelligence, or to those in which a subject is shown saying words they did not say.

The Facebook user then appealed to the oversight board.

The oversight board said it decided to take up the case “to assess whether Meta’s policies adequately cover altered videos” that could mislead people about politicians’ actions.

The board is inviting public comments for the next 14 days and will deliberate on the case over the next few weeks.