Facebook named the first members of its independent oversight board, which will be able to overturn the company’s decisions on individual pieces of content and recommend policy changes.

The first twenty members are chosen in part for a diversity of viewpoints and backgrounds, the members include a former prime minister, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the Guardian editor who oversaw the publication of the Snowden leaks. The company also added  several constitutional law experts and rights advocates among its first 20 members.

To build the board’s membership, Facebook recruited four co-chairs to lead the body. These include two American professors of constitutional law — Michael McConnell from Stanford and Jamal Greene from Columbia Law — who have written extensively on the procedures of judicial oversight in the US system. They are joined by Catalina Botero-Marino, dean of a prominent law school in Colombia, and Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former prime minister of Denmark. The board’s membership spans various political backgrounds. Vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, John Samples, is a founding member and has written extensively in opposition of efforts from the US government to regulate content moderation on social media.

These board members are not Facebook employees and the company says that it cannot remove them. The board’s decisions will be public, and Brent Harris, Facebook’s director of public policy, told reporters that the company “will implement the board’s decisions unless doing so violates the law.” Over the next few months, the body expects to grow to around 40 total members.

These decisions are expected to advise content moderation guidelines for Facebook and Instagram. WhatsApp, a Facebook property, will not fall under the board’s rulings due to “privacy and encryption reasons,” according to Greene.

“While we cannot claim to represent everyone,” Facebook said in a blog post on, “we are confident that our global composition will underpin, strengthen and guide our decision-making.”.

The independent board, which some have dubbed Facebook’s “Supreme Court,” will be able to overturn decisions by the company and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on whether individual pieces of content should be allowed on Facebook and Instagram.

The oversight board will focus on a small slice of challenging content issues including hate speech and harassment and people’s safety. The board, which will grow to about 40 members and which Facebook has pledged $130 million to fund for at least six years, will make public, binding decisions on controversial cases where users have exhausted Facebook’s usual appeals process.

The company can also refer significant decisions to the board, including on ads or on Facebook groups. The board can make policy recommendations to Facebook based on case decisions, to which the company will publicly respond.

Source- Reuters