Facebook Continues Plans for Independent Oversight Board
Bloomberg reports that Facebook is “still trying to agree on its fundamental structure … [and] basic decisions like how many members it should have, how those members should be picked, and how many posts the board will review, are all still undecided.” A draft charter specifies that the Oversight Board will be comprised of 40 people, appointed from around the world, and that three to five members will review each case. Once a decision is made, the “ruling board members will then write a public explanation, and could even suggest that Facebook tweak its policies.”
One definitive decision is that the board be independent, to quell criticism that Facebook has too much control over content. But not everyone is satisfied. “It’s all well and good for people on the outside to kind of prescribe that, yeah, Facebook needs to cede some of its power to outsiders,” said Stanford University law professor Nate Persily. “But when you start unpacking how to do that, it becomes extremely complicated very fast.”
Persily and a dozen law school students “created their own version of the Facebook Oversight Board,” and, at the end of May, presented findings that suggested the board be much larger than 40 part-timers. “If they’re going to do any reasonable slice of the cases that are going to go through the appeals process, it’s going to have to be much larger or it’s going to have to be full-time,” said Persily.
See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/facebook-continues-plans-for-independent-oversight-board/