Enlarge / Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2017. (credit: Mark Zuckerberg)
The Oversight Board, an independent organization set up to review Facebook’s content moderation decisions, handed down its first batch of rulings on Thursday. The rulings didn’t go well for Facebook’s moderators. Out of five substantive rulings, the board overturned four and upheld one.
Most technology platforms have unfettered discretion to remove content. In contrast, Facebook decided in 2019 to create an independent organization, the Oversight Board, to review Facebook decisions, much as the US Supreme Court reviews decisions by lower courts. The board has an independent funding stream and its members can’t be fired by Facebook. Facebook has promised to follow the board’s decisions unless doing so would be against the law.
The board’s first batch of five substantive decisions (a sixth case became moot after the user delete their post) illustrates the difficult challenge facing Facebook’s moderators:
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