Facebook Seeks Outside Review of Decisions to Ban Certain Content

Facebook will seek nominations for a 40-person content oversight board “soon,” according to a blog post by the social media site Thursday.The review board would hear appeals to Facebook’s decisions to remove certain kinds of material from the platform and adjudicate cases independent of both Facebook management and governments, according Brent Harris, Facebook’s director of Governance and Global Affairs. In 2018, Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook should develop a “Supreme Court” for content moderation, where users could appeal decisions to a body unaffiliated with the company.FILE – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gestures while speaking during a media event at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California, March 7, 2013.”You can imagine some sort of structure … that is made up of independent folks who don’t work for Facebook, who ultimately make the final judgment call on what should be acceptable speech in a community that reflects the social norms and values of people all around the world,” Zuckerberg said in an interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein. “I’ve increasingly come to believe that Facebook should not make so many important decisions about free expression and safety on our own,” Zuckerberg wrote in a November post. Facebook discussed the issues with more than 2,000 people from dozens of countries.”First and foremost, people want a board that exercises independent judgment,” wrote Harris. He also said people “want a board that’s as diverse as the many people on Facebook and Instagram.” Increased scrutiny The plans to create an oversight board come as the social media entity and other tech companies receive increased scrutiny and criticism regarding content moderation and bias.   Some Republican lawmakers have accused the company of bias in its content moderation systems, while others on the Democratic side have called for antitrust action against the company. In an interview with Fox Business, U.S. President Donald Trump advocated legal action against Facebook and the popular search engine, Google. “Look, we should be suing Google and Facebook and all that, which perhaps we will, OK?” Trump said. 
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