After facing severe criticism for its policies regarding posts, photos and videos, Facebook unveiled its blueprint on Tuesday for an independent oversight board, where people can appeal to review the company’s content decisions. Facebook gave details on the structure of the oversight board and its relationship to Facebook in the form of a charter. “The content policies we write and the decisions we make everyday matter to people. That’s why we always have to strive to keep getting better. The Oversight Board will make Facebook more accountable and improve our decision-making. This charter is a critical step towards what we hope will become a model for our industry,” said Nick Clegg, VP Global Affairs and Communications, Facebook.

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Composition of Board

Facebook said that they will appoint a ‘diverse and qualified group’ of 40 board members and the company will not name the entire board. The board members will serve a term of three years. Initially, Facebook will select members for a small group and the group will further select additional members. The 40-member panel will act as a ‘Supreme Court’ or appellate tribunal maintaining its independence.

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“One of the most important projects I've worked on over the past couple of years is establishing an independent Oversight Board that our community can appeal to on some of the hardest questions about what content is allowed on our services,” wrote Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and co-founder of Facebook. “We are responsible for enforcing our policies every day and we make millions of content decisions every week. But ultimately I don't believe private companies like ours should be making so many important decisions about speech on our own. That's why I've called for governments to set clearer standards around harmful content. It's also why we're now giving people a way to appeal our content decisions by establishing the independent Oversight Board,” he added.

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Prioritisation of cases

For now, the independent Oversight board will begin its operations by hearing facebook initiated cases but later on, its users will also be able to refer cases to the board demanding review. According to the Facebook newsroom, the board can request that its decision be applied to other instances or reproductions of the same content on Facebook. In such cases, Facebook will do so, to the extent technically and operationally feasible. Facebook will prioritize its cases on the basis of significance and difficulty. While the 'significance' will include factors like severity, scale, and public discourse, the difficulty factor will include disputed, uncertain and competing cases.

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