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Facebook Oversight Board begins accepting cases

Rappler.com

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Facebook Oversight Board begins accepting cases

OVERSIGHT BOARD WEBSITE

Photo by Gelo Gonzales/Rappler

The Board is expected to share details on the first cases it will review, and will be open to public comments

Facebook on Thursday, October 22 (Friday, October 23, in Manila) started accepting cases for review, Reuters reported.

Facebook announced the members of the Board in May, and had been expected to launch it prior to the November 3 US elections.

The Oversight Board is expected to review problematic content on the platform in order to set a precedent for similar types of content in the future and how to address them. This is one of the key differences that the Board will have over the independent fact-checkers on Facebook who tackle the day-to-day content.

It will also server as a last-resort appeals court for those who question decisions on content or pages being taken down. Facebook has an appeals system already in place, but if those fail, users may pursue further appeals through the Oversight Board’s website.

Once Facebook contacts a user about a content decision, the user has 15 days to make an appeal to the Board. Reuters reported that the appeal option will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

The Board is expected to share details on the first cases it will review, and will be open to public comments – though it is unclear if this will be a temporary workflow or if cases will remain transparent all throughout.

The Board – which currently has 20 members from the academe while some are former government officials, human rights activists, and journalists – has 90 days to decide on a case and for Facebook to act on it. It is expected to grow to 40 members.

The launch of the Oversight Board comes amid Facebook and Twitter taking down a New York Post article critical of presidential candidate Joe Biden. Such a takedown would have been right down the alley for the Board but that might not be submitted for review. Reuters reported that Brent Harris, Facebook’s director of governance and global affairs said hat there would be no expedited reviews before the election.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg first publicly mentioned the idea of the Board in 2018. Facebook funded the Board with a $130-million independent trust.

In September, experts launched their own Real Facebook Oversight Board led by Carole Cadwalladr, the Guardian journalist who broke the story on the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018. The group is made up of critics, including Rappler CEO and executive editor Maria Ressa, whose goal is to keep the pressure on Facebook to make swifter, more meaningful changes to its platform.

Facebook aggressively went after the websites of the Real Facebook Oversight Board in October, realfacebookoversight.com and realfacebookoversight.org, and had them taken down. Those URLs now redirect to a page on the website of The Citizens, the non-profit behind The Real Facebook Oversight Board. – Rappler.com

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