Facebook's Oversight Board Expands Scope to Hear Removal Requests
April 13 2021 - 12:56PM
Dow Jones News
By Bowdeya Tweh
Facebook Inc. is expanding the authority of its independent
oversight board, saying the panel will hear appeals from users on
the content they want removed from the company's platforms.
The social-media giant said Tuesday that over the coming weeks,
all users will have the ability to appeal decisions of content
moderators to keep flagged content such as posts, comments, photos
and videos on Facebook and Instagram. Previously, people were able
to make appeals to the Oversight Board only for content they wanted
restored to those platforms.
Board decisions are binding, the company has said.
Members of the Oversight Board have previously called for the
company to expand their purview to influence a wider range of
thorny content decisions that social-media platforms face. Facebook
convened the group, which includes nearly 20 professors, lawyers,
and human-rights activists among others from around the world, to
consider cases that have the potential to guide future content
decisions and rules. Guy Rosen, Facebook's vice president of
integrity, said in a blog post that the company will work to expand
the board's scope over time.
The board made its first rulings in January, with some decisions
illustrating a willingness to overturn prior content-moderation
decisions. But the panel is slated to make its biggest decision
later this month when it determines whether the company erred in
suspending former President Donald Trump's personal Facebook
account.
In a decision released Tuesday, the Oversight Board upheld
Facebook's decision to remove a post made last year by a user in
the Netherlands that content moderators determined broke one of its
rules against hate speech. A majority of the board argued that the
post, which contained caricatures of Black people in the form of
blackface, was linked to racist stereotypes.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 13, 2021 12:41 ET (16:41 GMT)
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