INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A real check to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg control is finally coming in the form of an 11 to 40-member Oversight Board that will review
appeals to its policy decisions, like content takedowns, and make recommendations for changes
Today Facebook released the charter establishing the theoretically independent Oversight Board, with Zuckerberg explaining that when it
takes a stance, &The board decision will be binding, even if I or anyone at Facebook disagrees with it.
Slated to be staffed with members
this year, who will be paid by a Facebook-established trust (the biggest update to its January draft charter), the Oversight Board will
begin judging cases in the first half of 2020
Given Zuckerberg overwhelming voting control of the company, and the fact that its board of directors contains many loyalists, like COO
Sheryl Sandberg and investor Peter Thiel whom he made very rich, the Oversight Board could ensure the CEO doesn''t always have the final say
in how Facebook works.
But in some ways, the committee could serve to shield Zuckerberg and Facebook from scrutiny and regulation, much to
The Oversight Board could remove total culpability for policy blunders around censorship or political bias from Facebook executives
It also might serve as a talking point toward the FTC and other regulators investigating it for potential antitrust violations and other
malpractice, as the company could claim the Oversight Board means it not completely free to pursue profit over what fair for
society.
One of the most important projects I've worked on over the past couple of years is establishing an independent
Oversight…
Posted by Mark Zuckerberg onTuesday, September 17, 2019
Finally, there remain serious concerns about how the Oversight Board
is selected and the wiggle room the charter provides Facebook
Most glaringly, Facebook itself will choose the initial members and then work with them to select the rest of the board, and thereby could
avoid adding overly incendiary figures
And it maintains that &Facebook will support the board to the extent that requests are technically and operationally feasible and consistent
with a reasonable allocation of Facebook resources,& giving it the right to decide if it should apply the precedent of Oversight Board
verdicts to similar cases or broadly implement its policy guidance.
How the Oversight Board works
When a user disagrees with how Facebook
enforces its policies, and with the result of an appeal to Facebook internal moderation team, they can request an appeal to the Oversight
Examples of potential cases include someone disagreeing with Facebook refusal to deem a piece of content as unacceptable hate speech or
bullying, its choice to designate a Page as promoting terrorism and remove it or the company decision to leave up problematic content, such
as nudity, because it newsworthy
Facebook also can directly ask the Oversight Board to review policy decisions or specific cases, especially urgent ones with real-world
consequences.
After Zuckerberg initially laid out a blueprint for the Oversight Board a year ago, Facebook assigned a 100-person team to
build out the plan for the board
It held six workshops and 22 round-tables, plus case-review simulations with 650 people from 88 countries.
The board will include a minimum
of 11 members, but Facebook is aiming for 40
They&ll serve three-year terms and a maximum of three terms each as a part-time job, with appointments staggered so there isn''t a full
Facebook is looking for members with a broad range of knowledge, competencies and expertise who lack conflicts of interest
They&re meant to be &experienced at deliberating thoughtfully and collegially,& &skilled at making and explaining decisions based on a set
of policies,& &well-versed on matters relating to digital content and governance& and &independent and impartial.
Facebook will appoint a
set of trustees that will work with it to select initial co-chairs for the board, who will then assist with sourcing, vetting, interviewing
and orienting new members
The goal is &broad diversity of geographic, gender, political, social and religious representation.& The trust, funded by Facebook with an
as yet undecided amount of capital, will set members& compensation rate in the near future and oversee term renewals.
Inevitable calls of
biased board members
My biggest worry here is how Facebook will handle the fact that it trying to represent an extraordinarily vast set of
global policy perspectives…broader than any one country laws
What taboo or even illegal in one nation may be common or lauded in another
Facebook may see endless challenges from different segments of the public regarding the previous public statements by board members.
What
Facebook own staff in California might see as an uncontroversial viewpoint could trigger calls for removal from the board elsewhere
We&ve seen how common &cancelled& culture has become when the public digs up problematic content from celebrities or politicians, and that
just based on what flies in the United States.
For example, Republican senators just bullied Facebook into removing a fact-check that found
the statement &abortion is never medically necessary& to be false, allowing that viewpoint to spread uninhibited on the social network
I personally wouldn''t want someone with that viewpoint on the Oversight Board, but others might feel the opposite
And what happens when politicians start demanding more conservative representation on the Oversight Board the same way they&ve badgered
Facebook for supposedly censoring them despite evidence to the contrary?
BARCELONA, SPAIN & FEBRUARY 21: Founder and CEO of Facebook Mark
Zuckerberg gives his speech during the presentation of the new Samsung Galaxy S7 and Samsung Galaxy S7 edge on February 21, 2016 in
(Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)
Which cases get reviewed?
The board will choose which cases to review based on their significance and
They&re looking for issues that are severe, large-scale and important for public discourse, while raising difficult questions about Facebook
policy or enforcement that is disputed, uncertain or represents tension or trade-offs between Facebook recently codified values of
authenticity, safety, privacy and dignity
The board will then create a sub-panel of five members to review a specific case.
The board will be able to question the request that
Facebook provide information necessary to rule on the case with a mind to not violating user privacy
They&ll interpret Facebook Community Standards and policies and then decide whether Facebook should remove or restore a piece of content and
whether it should change how that content was designated
Verdicts are meant to have consensus, but will be approved by majority when necessary.
How decisions get made
Once a panel makes a draft
decision, it circulated to the full board, which can recommend a new panel review if a majority take issue with the verdict
Once they&ve gone through a privacy review to protect the identities of those involved with the case, the decisions will be made public
within two weeks and affected users will be notified
Those decisions will be archived in a database, and are meant to act as precedent for future decisions
The idea is that the decisions of the board will be binding and implemented by Facebook as long as they don''t require it to violate the
law.
But will Facebook really implement them?
The biggest concern with the charter is that it still provides Facebook some leeway about
how to implement the board decisions
Critically, it only has to apply the decision to the specific case reviewed, and it at the company discretion to turn that into blanket
policy:
In instances where Facebook identifies that identical content with parallel context — which the board has already decided upon —
remains on Facebook, it will take action by analyzing whether it is technically and operationally feasible to apply the board decision to
When a decision includes policy guidance or a policy advisory opinion, Facebook will take further action by analyzing the operational
procedures required to implement the guidance, considering it in the formal policy development process of Facebook
Facebook will support the board to the extent that requests are technically and operationally feasible and consistent with a reasonable
allocation of Facebook resources.
Because of these sections I&ve bolded, Facebook has the ability to decide it would be operationally
infeasible to do what the board decided in every situation, merely take the guidance into account for future policy-making and choose
whether implementation is a reasonable allocation of capital and staff
This provides a sizable gray area.
If Facebook chooses that the board decision could materially reduce sharing even if it protected users,
it might consider that operationally infeasible
If it would cost too much to moderate content in the way the board recommends, it could deem that unreasonable resource allocation
And if the policy guidance doesn''t mesh with its other objectives, it only has to &consider& the board wishes.
This section is where
advocates and critics should focus
These exemptions to implementation need to be made less vague if the structure is truly going to hold Facebook accountable
If Facebook just declines to broadly change its policy to fit the board recommendation, all the board can do is make binding decisions on
specific cases.
Facebook director of governance Brent Harris explained on a call with reporters that If the board doesn''t feel like we&ve
handled it right, they&ll keep taking cases and overturn us.& But again the board power is focused on a case-by-case basis
