Does the Facebook Oversight Board have teeth?
A look at the Facebook oversight board from the lens of their recent Trump ban extension -- and pushing the decision back to Facebook
Hi All,
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In other news I am completely vaccinated. Don’t know if any of you saw the meme that said “Did you know that you can get a covid vaccine without posting on Facebook” :)
Introduction
This week I wanted to look at Facebook’s Oversight board (FOB). Mostly the questions that I want to answer are around the effectiveness, the decisions, the incentives for both Facebook and the Oversight board (that has so many amazing and accomplished people on it). The responsibility that they have taken on might seem like its a test-the-waters approach and that it may not have real teeth as so many people have pointed out. My opinion was the same until last week when they pushed back on Trump’s ban from Facebook but I’m putting the proverbial Mark before the Trump (Uhh cart before the horse? No? Need to work on that humor)
So let's dig in …
What is the Oversight board?
The oversight board is a group of accomplished people aimed at improving the way companies moderate speech on their platforms starting with Facebook (Note : I went to the same high school as Sudhir Krishnaswamy, who is on the board! Josephites ARE dynamite, indeed! ). The oversight board’s charter is to lend governance to moderation decisions and as we’ll see below the oversight board wants to do more.
The History
The oversight board created a little less than two years ago has, as of this writing made 10 decisions mostly on content moderation decisions. Additionally the oversight board made 9 policy recommendations to Facebook and Facebook responded back to these recommendations. From the link:
In addition to the Oversight Board’s binding rulings on content, we are committed to consider its recommendations and communicate transparently about actions taken. Today, we are committing to action to address 11 of the board’s recent recommendations. In several of these instances, we have already acted on the board’s recommendations, while in others, we are committing to what was recommended by the board, or going further. We also are assessing the feasibility of five more of the recommendations and will provide updates in the future.
The above linked article talks in detail if you are interested in the specific policy decisions but what I’d like to tease out is does the board really have legs or is this just policy theater?
Let's start off with how this all works:
The board gets a certain set of cases and takes time to deliberate
The board then makes a decision on content moderation
Additionally, the board suggests policies for Facebook to adapt policy changes to effect change at a larger scale
Facebook then can determine if they should or should not adapt these policies
In some cases Facebook has said they will adopt the policy recommendations but not in all cases
If they adopt the changes; do they make this as a change to the content moderation rules or to the actual product?
Let's look at how all that played out with the Trump ban:
Last week the oversight board came back with a decision that Trump stays banned currently but has to make a fresh ruling in six months. Now this might seem a bit odd but the board is doing exactly what it was intended to do -- not just be a toothless organization but make effective policy change. I’ve read various arguments on both sides that say “The board didn't do their job” and “Good on them for putting back for Facebook”.
I think however this is a decision that could have lots of impact on future policy. The amount of attention in this decision casts the spotlight back on Facebook but this was exactly what the board intended! The oversight brings up an interesting point - how long should the ban be for? Setting aside what each of us things personally the recommendation is very clear that you can ban a political leader or an influential user in the future for something that may be incitement to violence or discrimination or lawless action. Do those risks last forever and if not is it fair to allow him back on the platform? To be clear, it's about making this decision transparent (a policy change) rather than a one-off in this case. The indefinite nature is not consistent with international human rights (and this goes back to the makeup of the oversight board and what they are trying to effect). Then the real question here is how does this apply to another country such as India if a politician does the same thing?
Irrespective of whether you agree with a permanent ban or not; that is indeed a valid point -- and a way in which the oversight board is exercising exactly what their charter is. I have been skeptical about the board right since the start but I will say that this is starting to make sense now.
How the board would like to shape their decision:
As discussed a bit above, there are three layers to this problem:
An actual content moderation decision (leave or remove post so and so)
A change in content policy (for all future posts of nature x, here is the policy
Product changes to effect this so users can’t post in a certain way if they have been banned previously with some kind of a uh well, slow release back into Social Media society
I think where the oversight board would like to go is right to the product and effect change there since that is the only way in which harmful content can be nipped in the bud -- and this is not to say that Facebook does not do this on their own.
This also goes back to the decisions they have taken so far. There have been so many comparisons to how content moderators have to go through so many posts and the board only goes through 5-10 but in these few cases they have shown that they can be tough and hold Facebook accountable. The other thing here is that these things are hard and never been done before so it is going to take time to see this work effectively. My hope is that this oversight board becomes a quasi governmental entity that can mediate across all social media properties and not just Facebook. This will help with consistency and applicability of rules and policies if a social media company is impacted by a specific content decision/policy (and can then choose to improve products as needed). The one thing that is very hard here is how will this apply to every single country and government? Time will tell!
The life of a Facebook Product Manager
I mean for real, how really HOW can a 20 or 30 year old envision all the problematic ways their product can be used and account for that. The simple answer as a product person myself is there is no way without tonnes of deliberation and even then its just a guess. I’m not saying that some due diligence must not be done from a legal perspective but it should not completely hinder building products -- which is what the PM was hired to do.
The oversight board however has caught on and are thinking deeper into how they might be able to help the Product Manager at Facebook impact real change.
What kind of Product decisions can be made to bring a previously banned user back on the platform
Notwithstanding that Facebook makes some (a lot) of $ from the furious engagement here are a couple of ideas:
Limit Number of daily posts
Limit Virality of posts
Stagger virality of posts
Moderate before posting rather than after for a subset of individuals (that will take time though)
Limit number of comments
Remove comments
Remove reactions
Easier said than done right? Who is Facebook to determine what a user can post. The virality ones are especially problematic since they already face a lot of flak for limiting conservatives, which of course is not true
I look forward to observing an evolving board and seeing it effect real change - both on improving and building products!
Thank you for reading. Stay safe, be well! If you enjoyed reading this please consider sharing with a friend or two (or sign up here if you came across this or were forwarded this)
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