facebook oversight board boarddoueklawfare

The board is designed to have notable independence in these judgments it can overrule Zuckerberg himself. On its surface, the Oversight Board is a remarkable answer to a novel problem. The firm, which enjoys well over two billion users across the globe, has seen a broad array of serious problems related to the scaled, frictionless dissemination of content that is its core consumer service.

The deep public concern related to these issues is justified, and accordingly the Board’s duties include listening to users with grievances relating to them and deciding when to bring the hammer down on offending users or posts.īut we must ask: is the board really set up to succeed? Across Instagram, WhatsApp, and the principal Facebook platform, that content has come, inevitably, to encompass not only cat videos and baby photos but also hateful conduct, the incitement of terrorists in politically unstable locales, the spread of disinformation, and the systemic entrenchment of algorithmic bias. It is not poor execution that is responsible for the company’s general troubles in content moderation - it is the business model behind the company’s platforms itself. This same model lies at the center of the consumer internet as a whole and is based on maximizing consumer engagement and injecting ads throughout our digital experience. It relies on collecting personal data and on sophisticated algorithms that curate social feeds and target those ads. Because there is no earnest consideration of what consumers wish to or should see in this equation, they are subjected to whatever content the platform believes will maximize profits. These practices in turn generate negative externalities of which disinformation is only one. Take this example: When Russian political operatives sought to subvert our elections, they turned to the internet platforms. We witnessed this in the course of the 2016 elections in many forms – including posts on Twitter and Facebook that inflamed racial tensions and in order to suppress voting in certain communities in the United States. These efforts relied on the very same audience segmentation and targeting techniques that allow the platform to increase traffic (and ad revenue).

Already, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security are informing election officials that agents of the Russian government “might seek to covertly discourage or suppress U.S. Voters from participating in next year’s election.” Using the very tools these platforms have perfected, in other words, nefarious actors are identifying the thin cracks in American society and showering them with lies until our political fabric begins to rip apart.įor an oversight board to address these issues, it would need jurisdiction not only over personal posts but also political ads.

Facebook oversight board boarddoueklawfare