The Facebook Oversight Board recently filed its first judgments regarding content moderation on the social media platform on an international level. Not only does the board help form the policies of what gets banned on Facebook, but it is the Big Tech giant’s attempt at taking the need to legislate content out of its own hands.
The Oversight Board was announced in 2018 by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a separate entity that would handle decisions involving content moderation. The board selected its 20 members in 2020 from an assortment of people with backgrounds in media, law, and international policy before starting operations in October that same year.
Now, two years after its creation, the results are beginning to appear. The board revealed the first five rulings on Jan. 28, including:
- Overturning the removal of a post from Myanmar that blamed Muslim men for Kurds’ deaths in Syria.
- Upholding a decision to remove a post that used a Russian slur to describe Azerbaijanis due to their supposed role in destroying Armenians’ legacy.
- Overturning the removal of an Instagram post in Brazil designed to promote breast cancer awareness. The post had several visible nipples in the picture, hence the ban.
- Overturning Facebook’s decision to remove a post that misattributed a quote to Joseph Goebbels, the former Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany.
- Overturning the decision to remove a post that claimed a French medical agency was causing active harm. The post stated that the agency “contributed to the risk of imminent physical harm” through its unwillingness to authorize the use of hydroxychloroquine mixed with azithromycin for use against COVID-19.
While each of the decisions will deserve attention in time, the first one involving Myanmar has received the most scrutiny so far. In 2018, journalists discovered that Facebook’s mishandling of misinformation played a part in inciting mobs to engage in Muslims’ genocide in the region.
The tech platform said it would commission an investigation into said events to determine what part Facebook played in the circumstances. In it, Facebook’s product policy manager stated that “prior to this year, we weren’t doing enough to help prevent our platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence. We agree that we can and should do more.”
That makes the decision to allow a post that discriminates against Muslims somewhat puzzling. The civil rights organization Muslim Advocates told Mashable that “it’s impossible to square Mark Zuckerberg’s claim that Facebook does not profit from hate with the board’s decision to protect a post showing images of a dead Muslim child with a caption stating that ‘Muslims have something wrong in their mindset.'” However, others see it as evidence of Facebook attempting to protect free expression.
“A lack of sufficient experts in the content moderation team in 2018 led to Facebook contributing to the genocide in Burma,” said Chris Riley, a senior fellow of internet governance at the R Street Institute. “But in this case, Facebook has taken the initiative.”
Riley noted that the filing in question distinguishes between offensive or derogatory speech and speech that “incites imminent harm,” a standard that he believes holds up on an international understanding of what free speech should be.
As for the other four filings?
“I think the board wanted to establish upfront its independence, if only to put a stake in the ground on that point, and the initial decisions reflect that,” said Mike Masnick, founder of the Copia Institute and editor of Techdirt. Masnick told the Washington Examiner that the thoroughness of the analysis caught him off guard, as well as the attachment of policy recommendations.
Within a day of these rulings, the board announced that it planned to resolve former President Donald Trump’s indefinite ban from Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks. While some experts do have guesses about how it will turn out, the initial rulings do not provide any insight. Riley said that while he believes the case will be necessary for determining the board’s influence, he’s uncertain how it will play out. Masnick added that the decisions made so far had convinced him that the board could go either way on Trump.
