Facebook Oversight Panel Will Now Review Takedown Requests

Facebook’s unbiased Oversight Board introduced Tuesday it might begin accepting requests to take away “harmful content” that customers imagine has been wrongly allowed to stay on the main social community.

The transfer has the potential to vastly broaden the work of the so-called “supreme court” of Facebook, which to date had been tasked with reviewing cases of whether or not content material was improperly taken down from Facebook or Instagram.

The Oversight Board, arrange by Facebook to cope with contentious questions of content material moderation, started working final yr and issued its first rulings in January. The selections, which might overrule Facebook administration, are binding.

“Enabling users to appeal content they want to see removed from Facebook is a significant expansion of the Oversight Board’s capabilities,” mentioned Thomas Hughes, director of the physique’s administration. 

“The board was created to ensure that fewer decisions about highly significant content issues be taken by Facebook alone, and that better decisions can be delivered through an independent and transparent process that works to safeguard human rights and freedom of expression. Today’s announcement is another step towards realising this.”

The announcement comes with Facebook and different social platforms dealing with intense strain to behave on misinformation and abusive content material, starting from election-related hoaxes to unproven COVID-19 therapies.

Users who really feel that dangerous posts, pictures, movies, feedback, and shares stay on-line will have the ability to enchantment to the panel to have them eliminated.

As a part of the brand new course of, the panel will set up procedures together with privateness protections for customers in search of takedown requests.

“We expect everyone on Facebook and Instagram to be able to appeal content left up over the coming weeks,” mentioned Guy Rosen, head of integrity at Facebook.

“We’re glad the Oversight Board is expanding their scope and impact, and look forward to their future decisions and recommendations.”

Editorial board?
Emily Bell, director of the Columbia University Tow Center for Digital Journalism, mentioned the change means “a very big escalation of the remit of the Oversight Board,” and will transfer Facebook nearer to transformation right into a media firm.

“This is what a news-driven media company does, and this is what Facebook is. (Facebook CEO Mark) Zuckerberg cannot do this himself, nor can his board of directors and senior executives,” Bell mentioned on Twitter.

“So the Oversight Board becomes in fact a default editorial board.”

Jo Lukito, a professor with the University of Texas Center for Media Engagement, mentioned it remained unclear if Facebook will likely be overwhelmed by a deluge of takedown requests.

“Facebook’s Oversight Board lacks infrastructure to handle what will likely be a large influx of cases,” Lukito mentioned.

“Given Facebook’s lack of transparency and consistency when dealing with various misinformation cases, it is unclear whether this expansion of the Oversight Board’s purview would actually ensure misinformation is systematically removed from the social media platform.”

An activist group which calls itself “The Real Facebook Oversight Board” mentioned the brand new effort falls quick.

“By empowering their Oversight Board to do their job for them, Facebook is washing its hands of the toughest decisions the company itself should be making,” the group mentioned in a press release. 

Members of Facebook’s Oversight Board come from varied nations and embrace jurists, human rights activists, journalists, a Nobel Peace laureate and a former Danish prime minister.

The panel is reviewing tens of hundreds of circumstances, together with Facebook’s resolution banning former US president Donald Trump.

In one ruling issued Tuesday, the panel upheld Facebook’s resolution to take away a video posted by somebody within the Netherlands exhibiting a younger baby assembly adults with their faces painted black, dressed to painting “Zwarte Piet,” or Black Pete, a folklore persona recognized within the area as a companion of Saint Nicholas.

“The Oversight Board upheld Facebook’s decision after a majority found sufficient evidence of harm to justify the removal,” the board mentioned, noting that the pictures are linked to “racist stereotypes.” 

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