Content on Facebook will be monitored through a new process moving forward. Facebook is launching a new oversight board. The board will be in charge of managing appeals from Facebook users whose content has been taken down. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg shared in a blog post his plans of creating a ‘Supreme Court’ for Facebook. Notably, the post is from November of 2018 titled A Blueprint for Content Governance and Enforcement:
The board will be an advocate for our community — supporting people’s right to free expression, and making sure we fulfill our responsibility to keep people safe…as an independent organization, we hope it gives people confidence that their views will be heard, and that Facebook doesn’t have the ultimate power over their expression.
Furthermore, the news comes as the official charter was published today. In general, the introduction from the charter describes freedom of expression as a “fundamental human right”. Additionally, it goes on highlighting the importance of authenticity, safety, privacy, and dignity providing the reasoning behind assembling the Oversight Board. Making up the Board will be a variety of diverse individuals. Facebook’s director of governance and global affairs Brent Harris said:
There’s going to be a set of people who serve on this board who make different people within that group uncomfortable…we believe that in building the board and constituting the board and truly representing diversity in the composition of this institution, that this is actually going to be a feature.
By and large, Facebook seems to be taking action with how it will be monitoring content. Another recent change Facebook announced last week is how it will be monitoring news posted on the site. Working with participating news publishers, Facebook will work with editors to monitor and display headlines as well as article previews.
