FACEBOOK OVERSIGHT BOARD SERIES

FACEBOOK OVERSIGHT BOARD SERIES

It took over two years to establish through a series of 22 roundtable meetings with participants in 88 countries, six in-depth workshops, 250 one-on-one discussions and 1,200 submissions – not to mention its high cost of $130 million, which is meant to last six years. The Oversight Board has been extremely resource intensive. It’s unlikely, however, that other companies will ever have a similar type of board. Given Facebook’s shareholder-elected corporate board of directors includes just 10 people, each of whom has their own demanding day job, it is not surprising to me that Zuckerberg decided to set up an outside panel to develop decisions about speech and online safety. Other platform companies have considerably less content, and usually only in one language, whereas Facebook is available in 100 languages. Very few companies operate in a space that involves user content moderation, and none at this scale. It’s a social media giant that must monitor a global operation that generates over $86 billion in revenue, employs 58,600 people and serves more than 2.8 billion active monthly users – more than a third of the world’s population – as well as millions of advertisers. Is it a model other social media companies are likely to follow?Īs a platform company, Facebook is unique.

It’s one of the reasons the Oversight Board is dubbed “ Facebook’s Supreme Court.” 3. Given that Facebook is expected to take 20 to 30 billion enforcement actions in 2021 alone, it’s unlikely the Oversight Board will be able to handle more than a handful of the most high-profile cases, like that of Trump. And the board sometimes urged the company to clarify or revise its guidelines. In cases where the board overruled Facebook, the posts that had been removed were reinstated. In the 10th case, the user deleted the post that Facebook had removed, which ended the board’s review. It overturned Facebook’s ruling in six of the cases and upheld it in three of them. The decisions involved a variety of types of content, such as posts that were removed because they were deemed racist, indecent or intended to incite violence. So far, the board has reviewed 10 Facebook decisions, including the one involving Trump. Credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr In a statement, Trump called the Oversight Board decision a ‘total disgrace.’ 2. The goal is to eventually expand the board to 40 members in total. It even includes a former prime minister. The Oversight Board has 20 members from around the world and a diverse variety of disciplines and backgrounds, such as journalism, human rights and law, as well as different political perspectives. The idea was first proposed by Zuckerberg in 2018 after a discussion with Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman, and the board began work in October 2020, funded by a US$130 million trust provided by Facebook to cover the initial six years of operating expenses.Īccording to the board, it “was created to help Facebook answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression online: what to take down, what to leave up, and why.” The Oversight Board has final decision-making authority, even above the board of directors, and its decisions are binding on Facebook. The Oversight Board was set up to give users an independent third party to whom they can appeal Facebook moderation decisions, as well as to help set the policies that govern these decisions. What is this Oversight Board that made one of the most politically perilous decisions Facebook has ever faced? Why did the company create it, and is it a good idea? We asked Siri Terjesen, an expert on corporate governance, to answer these and several other questions. The board chastised Facebook for failing to either set an end date for the suspension or permanently ban Trump and gave the social media company six months to resolve the matter. The decision came four months after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg banned Trump “indefinitely” for his role in inciting the Jan. Facebook’s quasi-independent Oversight Board on May 5, 2021, upheld the company’s suspension of former President Donald Trump from the platform and Instagram.

Facebook oversight board