TCI Commentary :
Facebook has been on the receiving end of a lot of unwanted public scrutiny of late and it’s a sign of their dominance and influence in the online space. Fundamentally, governments around the world are worried about the spill over effects from what, at face value, appears to be a poorly regulated yet potent civic power.
You might expect a public interest company to consult more but Facebook doesn’t really sit firmly in this camp. It makes big money as a corporate and could rightly take no interest in what the public wants. However, that kind of thinking goes against some of their core values – such as to be as open as possible.
Consequently, it is ‘consulting’ on the implementation of a new oversight board, its membership and powers. Naturally the consultation is largely positioned online (powered by qualitrics) but crucially you don’t need a Facebook account to respond. As long as you’re over 17 and human, your opinion counts.
From a ‘purist’ perspective the consultation is a little unusual. There are combination of essay (pre consultation, “issues-like”) questions and regular quantitative questions. Framing and background information is provided but it isn’t implicit was has and has not been decided. For example, Facebook isn’t really fishing for view on if the new mechanism is needed or not or if there are any better, alternative ideas.
No question is mandatory (it can be skipped) and the lack of a “don’t know” answer may play havoc with the analysis of answers. But possibility the most glaring omission is the lack of appreciate for who the consultee is, other than where they live in the world. Ironically, the insights from responses based on “logged in” Facebook accounts would have been epic in terms of truly understanding who said what and why.
All of this aside, you’ve got to applaud Facebook for learning from their recent experiences and putting on their listening ears. One day the private sector might be as good at consulting stakeholders as the public sector.
Yet the solution here may not be the one that regulators want – such as disrupting or devolving Facebook powers. If Facebook wanted to play this game would be developing community compacts and considering how they can achieve greater harmony by relinquishing even more control.
Democratising the economy (knowledge or otherwise) and concentrating on inclusiveness (such as innovation & governance) is the real gold. It is my firm belief that corporate giants who embrace the notion of consultation and engagement for this purpose will be truly lasting
Article:
In November, Facebook announced its plans to create an external content oversight board that would serve as something of a “supreme court” for Facebook’s more controversial content policy decisions. With the release of a draft charter in January, the company took the first steps to describe how this content review board would function. Today, Facebook is opening a public consultation process to help it answer more questions around the oversight board’s design.
Over the next six weeks, Facebook says it will accept submissions from the public about its plans.
Public submissions will include two parts: a questionnaire and free-form questions.
The latter will focus on gathering input around membership, case decisions and governance. The questionnaire portion, however, is a more straightforward user survey where participants are asked to vote on various aspects (many already detailed in the draft charter) — like how many total members should the board have, how long they should serve, how should they gain their positions and what their makeup should be in terms of background, professional experience, views and diversity, among other things.
It also asks the public to weigh in on how the oversight board will make decisions on cases, with questions about how their rulings will impact policy, what subject matter experts they can consult, whether they should review written opinions from those the case affects, the precedent set by prior rulings and more.
Some of these questions are simpler to answer, while others may give survey respondents pause.
For example, one asks if it’s more important for the board to dedicate more time and research to each case or if it should prioritize making more decisions each year?
While obviously all cases reviewed should be well-researched, if you believe Facebook’s board should resemble the U.S. courts system, then there should be guidance around how long its board members have to make a decision. Otherwise, it could see some of the toughest content policy decisions tied up in never-ending deliberations, with the board citing “more research is needed” to rule. That wouldn’t be fair to those whose content is held hostage in the meantime. But the question doesn’t allow for this level of nuance — so you’d need to take to the essay portion to share this position.
However, anyone can take the survey portion of the questionnaire and can choose to skip the essay section if they don’t have more to add.
Facebook says it has partnered with the firm Baker McKenzie, which will help it review the submissions. The responses will be summarized in a report published in June.
For Facebook, the launch of an independent review board allows the company to further distance itself from controversial policy decisions.
As we noted in January, decision-making around content removals is an area where Facebook has repeatedly and publicly failed, and with disastrous consequences. The company has been widely criticized for how it handled issues like the calls to violence that led to genocide in Myanmar and riots in Sri Lanka; election meddling from state-backed actors from Russia, Iran and elsewhere; its failure to remove child abuse posts in India; the weaponization of Facebook by the government in the Philippines to silence its critics; Facebook’s approach to handling Holocaust denials or conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones; and more.
The board’s creation will not only take the pressure off Facebook to make these decisions, it’s also an admission of sorts that Facebook agrees it’s no longer able to handle this level of responsibility.
Those interested in sharing their own thoughts around the review board can go here for the survey.
The Institute cannot confirm the accuracy of this story or confirm that it presents a balanced view. If you feel this is inaccurate, we would welcome your perspective and evidence that this is the case
