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Oversight Board accepts case on Trump's indefinite suspension from Facebook
- bognition 6y agoWho established the board and who pays their salaries
- flyinglizard 6y agoThat’s literally the first entry in their FAQ. tldr - a trust set by Facebook.
- Sebguer 6y agoFacebook announced an initial commitment of $130 million to launch its new Oversight Board, which is designed as a way for users to appeal the social giant’s content decisions, but the entity is behind schedule with initial board members to be announced in 2020. The Oversight Board — which has been dubbed Facebook’s “Supreme Court” — will have the ability to make binding decisions independently of CEO Mark Zuckerberg or anyone else at Facebook. It’s set to launch in the first half of 2020, comprised of staff and board members independent of the company. (https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/facebook-130-million-fund-content-oversight-board-1203434228/ https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/facebook-130-million-f...)
- eplanit 6y agoNot dystopian or absurd, at all. It's like a tobacco company sponsored research lab to determine if nicotine is addictive.
- loceng 6y agoNo, it's not. This isn't about addiction, that's a different conversation. This is about a private company trying to do a better job of moderating what are very nuanced and important situations: what is acceptable behaviour on their private platform ("in their home") and what is not acceptable behaviour.
- tantalor 6y agoThe problem is Facebook is only going to ask for help if they don't care about the verdict. If one of the possible answers is bad for business then what?
- saddlerustle 6y agoUsers can appeal content moderation decisions to the board themselves: https://www.oversightboard.com/appeals-process/ https://www.oversightboard.com/appeals-process/
- takoid 6y agoThe comment you’re replying to is not trying to make the discussion about addiction. They are pointing out the absurdity of expecting a corporation to self-regulate itself in any meaningful way. This Oversight Board is likely nothing more than a manufactured authority figure designed to sway public opinion by deflecting responsibility away from Facebook in regards to censorship. Don’t be surprised when this Oversight Board comes out in full support of how Facebook handled the situation.
- pfisch 6y agoAs long as there has been democracy corporations have had oversight over controlling mass communications. What is happening now is not new or different. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/time-private-us-media-companies-stepped-silence-falsehoods-and-incitements-major-public-figure-1938-180976771/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/time-private-us-media...
- secabeen 6y agoThe classic quip to this end is something like: "freedom of the press is a freedom only available to people who own a press."
- saddlerustle 6y agoAlmost always Facebook does not care about the outcome of content moderation decisions. It does not meaningly affect ad revenue, but it's a huge driver of bad press. They want to externalise it as much as possible.
- asddubs 6y agoI think in this case they would actually stand to gain if they could just say "whelp, you heard the board, unban his account. sorry folks, nothing we can do, our hands are tied"
- pmoriarty 6y ago"comprised of staff and board members independent of the company" Independent in what sense? Do we know for sure that they and their families don't own any Facebook stock and are not associated with Facebook employees/owners? Just as important, how do they get on to be on Facebook's "Supreme Court"? I presume they're not elected by Facebook users and don't actually represent them in any tangible sense, so whose interests do they represent?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Overtonwindow 6y agoIt sort of reminds me of an HR panel - there to protect the company, not the user.
- bawolff 6y ago130 million?! Why would such a thing cost so much?
- strombofulous 6y agoWow, the company created, funded, and used exclusively by Facebook re-affirms Facebook's decision to do something? Truly shocking
- Sebguer 6y agoWow, the person who didn't read, parse, or understand the article in question made a wildly incorrect comment based on their pre-existing assumptions. (They accepted to review the case, they haven't accepted Facebook's decision, but good knee-jerk reaction.)
- strombofulous 6y agoWhoops
- btilly 6y agoActually strombofulus is, knowingly or not, correct here. The oversight board is theoretically independent, but was created by Facebook. If the fail to reinstate Trump, there will be questions about their independence (despite the efforts taken by Facebook to make them look independent). If they do reinstate Trump, there is a real chance that Facebook will decide that they are not actually a good idea. Either way their legitimacy has yet to be proven.
- underseacables 6y agoPlease do not insinuate that someone did not read an article. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago[flagged]
- alfongj 6y agoCheck your biases. https://oversightboard.com/meet-the-board/ https://oversightboard.com/meet-the-board/
- flunhat 6y agoGiven that one of the earliest comments on this post was: > Wow, the company created, funded, and used exclusively by Facebook re-affirms Facebook's decision to do something? > Truly shocking i.e. someone blindly adding to the anti-tech dogpile without even bothering to click on the article and, you know, read it, I'd hold off on any diatribes about how SV is a monoculture. The anti-SV crowd seems to be afflicted by a similar rabid tribalism that makes nuanced discussion very difficult.
- 0xy 6y agoI don't see how this is significant given this program was created to give Facebook political cover and is entirely funded and controlled by Facebook. It's about as independent as Facebook's ad and security divisions (that is to say not at all independent, the ad team has free reign to 2FA data for ad purposes, for example). Facebook and its mock "independent" board cannot be trusted.
- oh_sigh 6y agoI'd love to see a short essay written by each board member about their general views of Trump, along with how their vote went. I don't really see it happening, but it will be very weird in 2023 if Trump re-runs for election but is still banned from all the major social media sites.
- loceng 6y agoIt won't be weird. There's http://thedonald.win http://thedonald.win still online and is very active - and they ban/block any counter narratives, hypocritically "censoring"/blocking like what they're complaining about.
- chrisco255 6y agoThey were forced to move to https://patriots.win/ https://patriots.win/ after losing control of the domain. I think they've built an interesting Reddit alternative with what appears to be a solid effort from a small team. I don't mind topic-based communities that specifically state their goal is to promote an idea or a particular theme and banning off-topic content. If they create a general Politics community and then proceed to do that, yes, that would be hypocritical. Facebook and Twitter have always branded themselves as trying to connect the world. And now they (along with other big tech cos) have grown actively hostile to the half of the U.S. at least that considers themselves conservative. That's a big issue.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoIs there any concrete metric by which you'd say Facebook is hostile to the conservative half of the US? The top-performing links on Facebook are consistently conservative, as are many of the members of this Oversight Board.
- maxerickson 6y agoAre they allowed to post whatever they want on Facebook?
- dannyw 6y ago"Independent"... but uses fbcdn and blocked by Firefox's Facebook container. Have a look of the source code of the page. It literally starts with... <html lang="en" id="facebook" class="no_js">
- saddlerustle 6y agoWho's running the website is not the interesting part of this, note how US government independent agencies still use government IT.
- throwanem 6y agoBecause they're part of the US government. They're "independent" in the sense that they're not as closely tied to the head of the executive branch as e.g. cabinet departments, but they're still answerable to the judiciary at the very least. This is a fairly strong argument that you've made, but I wonder if it was the one you intended to make.
- Aunche 6y agoI view it as a failure of the current political climate that we need to turn to Facebook to fund an oversight board. A few months ago, Congress had a chance to cross examine the world's most influential CEOs about Section 230 to help them come up with meaningful legislation. Instead, they squandered the opportunity by complaining about decisions or content they found objectionable.
- saddlerustle 6y agoDespite all the talk, ultimately, the first amendment means congress has relatively little power over the content on social media websites.
- codezero 6y agoMy experience workin with lawyers enforcing content policies for social media sites based on laws, I uh, can’t quite agree with you. Example: recommended not to go to trail to keep questions & answers about math homework problems on a site because there was a successful argument that it’s illegal to copy/distribute the answer key to a copyrighted math textbook, so having them collected in a category on a website at scale would create an easy target for many publishers to litigate on some subset of content, and the content would be at high risk of being considered illegal under DMCA. (A good argument for decentralization, but leaves big gap in curation which many people consider critical) Fun part is that this hasn’t been tested (or hadn’t since I was doing that stuff) but the fact that lawyers direct these decisions based on experience and companies choose to pay or not pay based on that, your fantasy of some kind of unambiguous first amendment that the US government or legal system doesn’t regulate sounds hilariously uninformed.
- saddlerustle 6y agoCopyright is one broad exception to the first amendment, yes, but note it's only an exception because enforcing copyright is a power explicitly granted by the constitution. Most acknowledged first amendment exceptions are relatively narrow, at least compared to the controversial parts of the facebook content policy.
- gfodor 6y agoCreepy.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- blhack 6y agoI think “when they have started creating their own pseudo court system” is when we should start breaking these companies up. Yeesh. The bizarre opaqueness/projected importance of this is extremely off putting.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- arthurcolle 6y agoApparently it is independent ;)
- willxinc 6y agoThat's because it is, that's the entire point of it.
- pugworthy 6y agoBut... isn't banning an ex president for life important? Who SHOULD decide? And how?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jbnorth 6y agoI would say that's an easy question. No, it's not important. Who should decide? Whoever at the company is given the authority to ban people from their website. How? Following whatever protocols they come up with? Want to have their own pseudo-court system? Go for it. Want to have a ban lottery so people may just randomly be banned for no reason? Go for it, it's your website do what you want with it.
- chrischattin 6y agoThis is a company that built itself under the premis that it was the public square and now it is arbitrating who can speak and who cannot? I'd say they've violated the original social contract, and that of the open source web, and are now subject to regulation – by entities they helped put in place in government. This whole thing is becoming a dystopian nightmare. Edit: Image if AT&T started shutting off Democrat's cell phones.
- hartator 6y agoWtf is the oversight board? I am missing something where we went dystopian?
- jariel 6y agoActually it's a good first step. Basically, FB is punting the responsibility of making the tough-call ban decisions to a 'neutral entity' - which is actually a very good idea. Bad on the whole, because FB ultimately I don't think should be entirely responsible for the decision (we need some helpful regulation maybe?). But nevertheless, it's a decent idea because it does add some legitimacy to the decisions. Zuck would probably like nothing other than to wash his hands of the publicity of decisions making, that said, I'm doubtful of the neutrality of the board either politically or from FB itself. The board - whoever they are - knows that Zuck is the Man, and that's that.
- bArray 6y agoFacebook are funding an 'independent' oversight committee to tell them that their decision making was correct. I think it achieves a you things for them: 1. Suggests to regulators that regulation is not needed, as they have self imposed regulation. This way, it only needs to appear to work, rather than actually work. 2. Shifts the blame of the decision to an independent board, which can later be thrown under the bus if required.
- Zenst 6y agoWell, if there was any legal fallout in lawsuits from the ban, some independent solidarity would sure help curtail that avenue. So from that aspect alone, prudent move.
- icefrakker 6y agoThe psychopaths at Facebook have extended the uncanny valley from human faces to human institutions. Excellent work Mark.
- kevitivity 6y agoFB can and should ban whoever they want, for whatever reason. Just make it publicly clear why, along with all of the name of the people on this "oversight board". I probably shouldn't assume this board will be guided by the U.S. view of free speech.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> I probably shouldn't assume this board will be guided by the U.S. view of free speech. The US view of free speech is that private firms (other than regulated common carriers, etc.) have it and don't have to use their platform to relay your speech unless they’ve made a contract with you to do so. I would assume that The Oversight Board will be guided by this, plus whatever more specific guidelines FB has specified.
- ma2rten 6y agoI don't understand the cynical takes in the comments. Something like this seems like the least worst option. We wouldn't want the government telling private companies how to moderate their websites, but we also wouldn't want Mark Zuckerberg making those decisions.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> We wouldn't want the government telling private companies how to moderate their websites “We”, who? Manifestly, plenty of people in this thread have explicitly argued that this should be either done by the government or go beyond the national government to the UN. So, while you might not want the government to do this, and I might not want the government to do this, plenty of people do want state or superstate direction rather than private freedom of speech/press here.
- apple4ever 6y agoFor me it just seems like another way to cover whatever they want to do. Just like any of the FAANG companies when you "appeal" a decision and it just goes to the same people who make the same decision.
- mactyler 6y agoThis is the first I've heard of this new oversight board concept, who knows how this will go, but I think it's a really unique concept and let's give it a shot! If anything, it's just nice to see an innovative strategy applied to very big problem of today. I wish the best of luck to all of the members.