Oversight Board (Meta)

This article is about the review body established by Facebook. For other uses, see Oversight board.

Oversight Board
Purpose"… promot[ing] free expression by making principled, independent decisions … issuing recommendations on the relevant Facebook company content policy."[1]
Co-chairs
FundingMeta Platforms
Websiteoversightboard.com
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The Oversight Board is a body that makes consequential precedent-setting content moderation decisions (see Table of decisions below) on the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, in a form of "platform self-governance".[3]

Meta (then Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg approved the creation of the board in November 2018, shortly after a meeting with Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, who had proposed the creation of a quasi-judiciary on Facebook.[4] Zuckerberg originally described it as a kind of "Supreme Court", given its role in settlement, negotiation, and mediation, including the power to override the company's decisions.[5]

Zuckerberg first announced the idea in November 2018, and, after a period of public consultation, the board's 20 founding members were announced in May 2020. The board officially began its work on October 22, 2020,[6] and issued its first five decisions on January 28, 2021, with four out of the five overturning Facebook's actions with respect to the matters appealed.[7] It has been subject to substantial media speculation and coverage since its announcement, and has remained so following the referral of Facebook's decision to suspend Donald Trump after the 2021 United States Capitol attack.[8]

  1. ^ "Oversight Board | Independent Judgment. Transparency. Legitimacy". oversightboard.com. Archived from the original on 5 May 2021. Retrieved 5 May 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d e f "Governance | Oversight Board". oversightboard.com. Archived from the original on 5 May 2021. Retrieved 5 May 2021.
  3. ^ Wong, David; Floridi, Luciano (24 October 2022). "Meta's Oversight Board: A Review and Critical Assessment". Minds and Machines. 33 (2): 261–284. doi:10.1007/s11023-022-09613-x. ISSN 1572-8641.
  4. ^ Klonick, Kate (12 February 2021). "Inside the Making of Facebook's Supreme Court". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 1 January 2022. Retrieved 12 February 2021.
  5. ^ Douek, Evelyn (2019). "Facebook's 'Oversight Board': Move Fast with Stable Infrastructure and Humility". North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology. 21 (1). SSRN 3365358. Archived from the original on 27 December 2021. Retrieved 23 January 2021.
  6. ^ Fung, Brian (22 October 2020). "Facebook's Oversight Board is finally hearing cases, two years after it was first announced". CNN. Archived from the original on 28 October 2021. Retrieved 22 October 2020.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Slate 1-28-21 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference lawfare was invoked but never defined (see the help page).