Facebook Oversight Board: Governance, Challenges, and Effectiveness

This report examines the Facebook Oversight Board, a governance mechanism established by Facebook to address challenges related to hate speech and misinformation. The report delves into the board's structure, independence, and its ability to influence Facebook's content moderation decisions. It highlights the board's objectives, including transparency and accountability, while also exploring the limitations of its powers, such as its inability to set new rules or access internal documents. The analysis addresses the grey issues surrounding the board's operations, including funding, member selection, and decision-making processes. Furthermore, the report discusses the board's impact on freedom of expression, human rights, and social and political issues. It concludes by assessing the board's effectiveness in achieving its goals and its overall contribution to a more responsible and democratic Facebook platform. The report also references several sources, including academic papers and Facebook's own publications on the topic.

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Facebook oversight board
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Facebook Oversight Board was launched as a significant element of a governance
channel on content moderation. It was to address some challenges caused by the widespread hate
speech and misinformation circulated through Facebook. There needed to be combined responses
from Facebook companies and governments (Devitt et al., 2021). Therefore, Facebook's
approach is set in Mark Zuckerberg's vision of a new independent system that can address
governance and enforcement issues. Yes, the Oversight Board helps Facebook achieve the goal
of being a democratizing force for putting power in people's hands. It provides a way for people
to challenge Facebook's decisions through an independent body whose decisions will be
transparent and binding. Zuckerberg emphasized independence and oversight that decisions
made are of best interest to the community and the company.
Facebook is creating a platform that incorporates human rights tribunals with direct
jurisdiction over billions of people with the ability to impose sanctions and control practical
development of freedom of opinion and expression, privacy, and hate speech. In most countries
and territories, Facebook is the basis of conducting global operations (Devitt et al., 2021). It has
become a leading channel of communication, expression, and information for a larger population
globally, together with its importance in the share of global markets in advertising. Oversight
Board's launch has made many people believe that Facebook will start to be more responsible
and deliver effective measures to address adverse impacts on freedom of expression, human
rights, social and political issues (Devitt et al., 2021). The Oversight Board is the most important
and most potent operational grievance mechanism set up by any company.
The by laws state that the oversight board would receive complaints from workers and
people in the community or those affected by Facebook's operations seeking some remediation.
It takes an appeal mechanism that primarily reviews decisions that Facebook staff has removed

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from the platform (A Bayesian social platform for inclusive and evidence-based decision
making, 2019). The review may b from users disconnected with removal decisions or from
Facebook staff who have removed the content but think the issue raises a broader policy issue for
the board to consider. Still, these systems do not contemplate the review of content that has not
been removed and provides no remedies to a user or a non-user. The board comprises about 4o
experts who are independent and experts on a broad range of important fields such as gender,
social, religion, and politics.
The board took in some activists as a step in the direction of being transparent. Still, the
critics say its powers are much limited to take on the big problem Facebook has with controlling
the spread of hate speech and misinformation. The board can only rule on posts that have been
wrongly noted down, not on those that are allowed to remain. It can only interpret Facebooks'
current rules and not set new rules (A Bayesian social platform for inclusive and evidence-based
decision making, 2019). The board has no potential power to make requests for internal
documents from Facebook, like in complaints made about staff decision-making. To an account,
the board has only selected six cases out of more than 20,000 reported by Facebook users since
the submissions were opened in October.
The goal of the board was to set precedents via ruling on cases that are likely to affect
multiple users. Members of the human rights group do not believe that the board will make any
difference concerning the platform's policy and behaviors. The oversight board has achieved the
goals and objectives that it was set to accomplish of ensuring that the democracy force of putting
power in the hands of people is maintained. They also aimed to include at least 40 people around
the world to discuss the issues that may arise ahead of the board. Therefore, various matters
referred to as grey issues were raised by people and mostly Facebook users concerning the

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Oversight Board. A significant grey issue was given in the implementation of and allocation of
funds and members. On this specific gray issue, the board agreed to identify an identical content
used in place of the contents being removed.
The board decided that the information and action should be taken and handled based on
the board's analysis of feasible and technical measures on the contents. On these issues, grey
issues exist because there are controversies on when decisions should be made. Whether it
should include the advice of the policy members or the policy guidance, Facebook will take and
implement corrective actions and analyze the operations' steps and procedures, hence executing
the course. Therefore, developing Facebook Oversight Board should be considered adequate and
a gradual process to establish the Facebook platform (Devitt et al., 2021). Facebook users
decided to give support to the information by making it be technically and operationally feasible.
Another gray issue concerning the independent oversight board was the process of
making decisions on various issues. The issue was solved by the agreement made by the board
on making decisions on different issues arising (Devitt et al., 2021). There was an agreement on
the need and requirement to come up with a report that was supposed to be completed annually.
The information would be able to give the decisions and the respective implementations and
actions. The reports will be given to the public to enable the public to view them and share their
comments and reviews. Facebook will be given the mandate of making decisions by the board
and also make the findings. Therefore, policy-making and decision-making are the work of
Facebook and not the board.
Content moderation is another grey issue experienced by the independent oversight
board. This problem has been shared for a very long time, approximately 10-15 years. Many

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possibilities were developed to solve this specific issue. Facebook implemented a self-regulatory
process that has not yet been resolved, and a decision has not been given. The content that should
be accessed is limited, and the board has specific expectations on what it should access (Devitt et
al., 2021). In case the board accesses the information, it would be considered a severe offense
solved by lawyers. This issue is complicated, and there might not be any available methods to
prevent the board from accessing the information. Some individuals find the matters offensive
and fail to understand the precautions and the side that the board will take when deciding the
cases.
In summary, the independent oversight board should handle the privacy cases and other
related cases that affect Facebook as the commonly used social media platform. Some offending
questions should also be put into consideration when dealing with the issues. The board should
leave out various matters because they would harm some Facebook users. The board should
solve the grey issues despite the problem and the technicality of the possible decisions.

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References.
A Bayesian social platform for inclusive and evidence-based decision making. arXiv preprint
arXiv:2102.06893. NCJL & Tech. 21 (2019): 1.
Bowers, J., & Zittrain, J. L. (2020). Answering impossible questions: Content governance in an
age of disinformation.
Devitt, S. K., Pearce, T. R., Chowdhury, A. K., & Mengersen, K. (2021). A Bayesian social
platform for inclusive and evidence-based decision making. arXiv preprint
arXiv:2102.06893.
Douek, Evelyn. "Facebook's Oversight Board: Move Fast with Stable Infrastructure and
Humility." Devitt, S. K., Pearce, T. R., Chowdhury, A. K., & Mengersen, K. (2021).
Napoli, P. M. (2020). Connecting Journalism and Public Policy: New Concerns and Continuing
Challenges.
Zuckerberg, M. (2018). MZ shares a note-A Blueprint for Content Governance and Enforcement.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-blueprint-for-content-governance-
and-enforcement/10156443129621634/