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Facebook Announces the Details of the Content Appeals Board
29 Jan, 2020 / 10:28 AM / OMNES

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 Facebook reveals the details of its independent oversight board and announced that a former human rights group director will lead the board’s administrative staff. Named as The content appeals board, which will grow to  about 40 members and will be able to overrule Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, is one of the company’s high-profile responses to criticism over how it handles problematic content on Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook will name board members later in 2020, but it announced that Thomas Hughes, former executive director for freedom of expression rights group Article 19, will oversee the board’s administrative staff, whose first offices will be in the United States and United Kingdom.

The content appeals board will evaluate how the company handles controversial posts on its platform, and which could influence its takedown policies around contentious topics like hate speech, nudity, and misinformation. Eventually, the board could also have the power to overrule Facebook’s controversial ad policy that allows politicians to make false statements in political ads. The policy has lately been the source of heated criticism for the company. The new board could potentially reverse these kinds of decisions one day.

Brent Harris, Facebook’s head of governance and global affairs, said the company had narrowed choices for board members down to “a few dozen people” but no formal offers had been made. He said Facebook hoped the board, which will also be able to recommend policy changes, will start hearing cases this summer.

In December, Facebook pledged $130 million to fund the board for about six years. The board’s cases can be referred either by Facebook or by a user who has exhausted the appeals process. The proposed bylaws give a 90-day period for the board to make a decision and Facebook to act on it. For cases with “urgent real-world consequences,” there will a 30-day expedited review.

Facebook said to start with users will only be able to appeal to the board when their content has been removed, though in future it wants the board to also handle cases where content was left up. Facebook, which has recently come under fire over its decision not to fact-check politicians’ ads, also said that the types of content that the board can review will later increase to include ads, Groups and Pages.

The board plans to hear its first cases in the first half of 2020, in time for the U.S presidential elections. So presumably, by that timeline, it will have to hire its members by July this year.