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- In late 2018, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced an ambitious plan: To create an independent oversight board that could overrule Facebook's content moderation guidelines, and even Zuckerberg himself.
- The board is independent from Facebook, but Facebook is funding the board's operations to the tune of $130 million.
- If users believe their content was removed from the service unfairly or without cause, they can appeal to the independent board directly. If it decides to reverse Facebook's decision, that decision "will be binding," Zuckerberg said, "even if I or anyone at Facebook disagrees with it."
- On Tuesday, that board got its first leader: Thomas Hughes.
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With over two billion users, Facebook has a major moderation problem on its hands.
Whether you're talking about the platform's use by Russian government-backed trolls in the 2016 US Presidential election, or to spread propaganda during the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, or when a shooter livestreamed a mass shooting in New Zealand, Facebook has faced moderation issue after moderation issue across the past few years.
And the company is well aware of the enormity of its problem. "One of the most painful lessons I've learned," CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in late 2018, "is that when you connect two billion people, you will see all the beauty and ugliness of humanity."
As a result, Facebook is establishing a board it says is independent, outside of control of the company's leadership, that can ultimately overrule Facebook's own policies on content management. The company has even pledged $130 million to get the board funded and operational, with plans to launch in 2020.
And on Tuesday, that independent board got its first leader: Thomas Hughes.
Hughes will lead the new oversight group as its director of oversight board administration.
In his previous role, which he left in early January, Hughes served as the executive director of Article 19, a British human rights group that focuses on freedom of information and expression.
In his new role, job number one will be hiring a staff and building an infrastructure — essentially an entirely new company — that he said would be autonomous from Facebook, though funded by Facebook. The end goal: To create an independent body from Facebook that can overrule even Mark Zuckerberg if need be.
The idea is to provide a means for users to appeal Facebook's moderation decisions to an institution other than Facebook itself.
"The purpose of this body would be to uphold the principle of giving people a voice while also recognizing the reality of keeping people safe," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a November 2018 note announcing the board.
Exactly how that will work remains to be seen, but the idea goes something like this, according to the company:
Both Facebook itself and Facebook users can surface issues with the independent oversight board. For most Facebook users, being able to appeal to the independent board will only become an option "after the direct appeals process with Facebook" concludes, which means users will first have to appeal to Facebook and go through the company's process.
Most important of all: Decisions made by the oversight board outright overrule Facebook itself, and can even overrule Zuckerberg's decisions. "The board's decision will be binding, even if I or anyone at Facebook disagrees with it," Zuckerberg said in a letter published in September 2019.
The oversight board will require its own offices, bureaucracy, and support staff. Facebook says it is a completely different entity, rather than a subsidiary of Facebook, like Oculus or Instagram.
That separation is by design. It's a measure of the board's independence from the company it's intended to oversee. And Thomas Hughes is charged with building that company from scratch.
See Also:
- Facebook knows what you're doing on other sites and in real life. This tool lets you see what it knows about you.
- An ex-Googler who thinks big tech companies have acted unethically for years thinks Facebook has become a 'Frankenstein' that needs to be slain to save society
- Sheryl Sandberg spoke at a private event in Davos and revealed that Facebook is rolling out a new privacy checkup to 2 billion people as part of efforts to be more accountable
