NEW YORK, Oct 23 (Reuters) -

Meta Platforms' ( META ) Oversight Board on Wednesday told

the company to keep up a Facebook post superimposing the faces

of U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her

running mate Tim Walz onto a parody "Dumb and Dumber" movie

poster showing the characters pinching each other's nipples

through their clothing.

The board accused the company of acting too aggressively

against an obvious political parody with the post. The original

movie poster depicts two male characters known for engaging in

gross-out bawdy antics.

Meta originally took the post down for violating a rule

against "derogatory sexualized photoshop" manipulations of

images, but restored it once the board informed Meta it was

examining the case, the Oversight Board said in a blog post.

The company told the board it "does not consider that

pinching a person's nipple through their clothing qualifies as

sexual activity," the board said.

The board, which is funded by Meta but operates

independently, did not comment directly on Meta's rationale but

said the post in question showed a "non-sexualized derogatory

depiction" of political figures and therefore was not in

violation of Facebook rules.

Meta's initial removal was a worrying sign of the company's

tendency toward "overenforcement" of its policies against satire

and political speech, it added.

"This post is nothing more than a commonplace satirical

image of prominent politicians and is instantly recognizable as

such," the board wrote.

It said that the company's failure to handle the post

appropriately on its first try "raises serious concerns about

the systems and resources Meta has in place to effectively make

content determinations in such electoral contexts."

The case highlights the fine line the world's biggest social

media platform must walk in moderating posts pertaining to the

highly charged U.S. political environment. Conservatives

frequently complain it removes too much of their content while

progressives generally say it does too little to police

misinformation and abuse on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and

Threads.

Meta relies heavily on automated AI-powered enforcement

of its rules. This controls the cost of moderating the posts of

its more than 3 billion users, but elicits gripes from users who

say the systems often fail to detect parody and context.