Facebook names 20-member ‘Supreme Court’ panel to moderate content

Socila networking giant Facebook on Wednesday (May 6) announced the first 20-member Oversight Board, which will act as a “Supreme Court” for the platform, on decisions about how content is moderated on Instagram and Facebook.

The Board will be looking at disputes about Posts, Pages, Profiles, Groups and even Ads on Facebook.  The Global Oversight Board will also decide on a deluge of ethical, editorial, privacy, free speech and moral issues.

The Board can overturn decisions taken by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and will be the final word on all cases it hears.

Both users and Facebook can refer cases to the Board, but which cases are taken up will be at the Board’s discretion. It will have its own user facing website, which will be used for submitting disputes.

When Zuckerberg had first outlined his blueprint hinting at introducing a new system for content governance and enforcement, he had said, “Facebook should not make so many important decisions about free expression and safety on our own. With our size comes a great deal of responsibility and while we have always taken advice from experts on how to best keep our platforms safe, until now, we have made the final decisions about what should be allowed on our platforms and what should be removed. And these decisions often are not easy to make – most judgments do not have obvious, or uncontroversial, outcomes and yet many of them have significant implications for free expression.”

It is learnt that Zuckerberg had decided to constitute the board in early 2018, as he thought that outsourcing some decisions to an independent entity would help in enhancing the credibility of his company. 

For now, the newly formed board will only take into considerations the cases where Facebook took down user content but later the 20-member board will also tackle cases where arguably objectionable content was allowed to stand.