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> You can see how this impacts the Board's rulings, they're almost always formed as requirements that Facebook clarify its policies further. If that's the case

• joshuamorton 5y ago
  > If that's the case, then the Oversight Board doesn't actually serve the purpose that the Supreme Court does Yes and no. Ensuring that Facebook is transparent with their policies is valuable. The OB prevents Facebook from lying to users about what its policies are in practice, so there is oversight that ensures that the de facto and de jure policies don't veer apart. That's still very much what the supreme court does, and very much not what the Iranian Assembly of Experts does. It is the case that the OB is relatively less powerful than the Supreme court because the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch of Facebook are one and the same, and so relatively far more powerful. But it still provides a semblance of an independent judiciary. A lot of its power comes in keeping facebook honest and accountable to users. A facebook that cannot lie about its policies is easier to hold accountable. > As long as the unflinching absolutist doesn't have the final say as a single individual I think this is akin to saying that a Supreme Court justice who believes that the law should be that the first amendment should apply to Facebook would be an asset to the court. That's true only if that's the outcome you prefer. Its terrible for the legitimacy of the court if someone's values are antithetical to the policies they're purportedly interpreting.
  • bhupy 5y ago
    I think we're aggressively in agreement about one thing: the OB is actually not the US Supreme Court, it's the Iranian Assembly of Experts. I think where we are in disagreement is whether this remotely can be considered an independent judiciary (Iran is below average: http://reports.weforum.org/pdf/gci-2017-2018-scorecard/WEF_GCI_2017_2018_Scorecard_EOSQ144.pdf http://reports.weforum.org/pdf/gci-2017-2018-scorecard/WEF_G...). As long as the OB functions in the way that you just described, it is not that. It is quite literally "One department of the megacorp confirms a decision made by the other department", and the fact that it's comprised of academics and experts (per the GP commenter) is just lipstick on a pig.
    • joshuamorton 5y ago
      > I think we're aggressively in agreement about one thing: the OB is actually not the US Supreme Court, it's the Iranian Assembly of Experts. I think if you've concluded that from my prior comment, you're not reading what I've said with any open mind. Because I explicitly stated the opposite. I think its also very clear that in practice "one part of the megacorp confirms the others" isn't how the OB has operated so far. There are cases where the OB has suggested FB adopt more aggressive polices, and cases where it has suggested it adopt more lax ones, and cases where it has told facebook that it wasn't acting in accordance with its policies. For example this one where, to continue the judicial metaphor, the OB remanded the case back to a lower court, noting that a "permanent suspension" was unconstitutional. Facebook can now have the lower court issue a different ruling (and then perhaps have that ruling appealed to the SC), or it could open itself to criticism by changing its policies to allowing a "permanent suspension", whatever that means.
      • bhupy 5y ago
        > I think if you've concluded that from my prior comment, you're not reading what I've said with any open mind. Because I explicitly stated the opposite. You more or less admitted it in the following statement: "It is the case that the OB is relatively less powerful than the Supreme court because the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch of Facebook are one and the same, and so relatively far more powerful". That's essentially how Iran works today, and its judiciary is the opposite of independent. Nobody ever sets out to create a dysfunctional judiciary, it's just extraordinarily easy to create a system that trends toward rot in the long run. Likewise, in most countries where independence of the judiciary is a foreign concept, it's not because they didn't attempt to set up an independent judiciary, it's because the structure doesn't ensure an independent judiciary in the long run. At the end of the day, that's what a "Constitution" is. It means "structure". > I think its also very clear that in practice "one part of the megacorp confirms the others" isn't how the OB has operated so far. Correct, and I'm making no comments here about how the OB has operated so far, I'm trying to understand the structure of the system to try and predict how it might operate in the future. Throughout my line of commenting here, you'll notice that I'm asking about the checks and balances underlying the OB and how its members are appointed. I think the composition of the board, as it exists today, appears (mostly) reasonable. However, the mechanism by which new members are appointed (at least as I understand it) leaves much to be desired. When such a body is comprised almost entirely of people that ideologically align with the corporation it aims to check it becomes a sign of how the OB might operate in the future, and from what I can tell, there's no check preventing this from happening in this system that FB has created. In the long run, as judicial systems go, the OB appears to lean much more toward the Iran side of the spectrum rather than the US side of the spectrum.