Facebook Set to Have Its Own ‘Supreme Court’, Where Users Can Challenge Company’s Decision

Facebook has recently unveiled its blueprint for an independent oversight board, which will review the decisions of the company about the posts, photos and videos it takes down or leaves online on its platform. This arrangement has been made after waves of criticism about the inconsistent policies have undermined the platform, which has 2.2 billion users across the world.

The 40-person panel is going to function as the ‘Supreme Court’ for the social media giant, that will serve as the final word for Facebook users who want to appeal in the company’s moderation decisions. The panel will also offer recommendations to the tech giant, how it should tackle problematic content in the near future.

Facebook Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post, “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”.

The decision is seen as a shift of responsibility from the company’s top executives and engineers, but it will certainly help Facebook to distance itself from the criticism it has faced over the years for its decisions, which also have fueled the strict government regulation.

For years, the lawmakers in the US have pressured Silicon Valley to take more proactive steps to stop the spread of fake news, detect violent threats in real-time, white supremacy and combat false information, which include manipulated online videos and images. Facebook has also announced that it had tightened its rules and tools to spot and remove hate speech.

Though, Facebook has maintained its detailed policies to combat and remove harmful speech, including attacks on the basis of race or religion, terrorist propaganda and disinformation, but the company has struggled to implement and enforce those rules uniformly which resulted in the viral spread of harmful contents at numerous occasions. But this time, to navigate its plan and to deal with political pressures globally, Facebook seems determined. 

Mark Zuckerberg first sketched his vision for an independent body in November last year. The independent body that would serve as a check on the human reviewers and artificial intelligence tools that vet the posts uploaded by its community of users spread across the world.

Now, as the charter is released, Facebook is expected to address allegations of unfairness on a global scale. Presently the company aims to have a board of 40 members, representing different regions of the world, who will serve a term of three years. 

Facebook has declared that it intends to select a few members at first, so to start the board and those members will in the course choose the remaining members, all of whom will be overseen by an independent trust, which Facebook plans to establish soon.

Global regulators have already issued an ultimatum to Facebook, Google and Twitter, threatening them that they will be directly responsible for the decisions they make and the content they allow online, unless they improve their own platforms. So, this move by Facebook is seen as a positive move in this direction, but time will say how far it has been able to maintain its promises with which it has come up.