#13 - Facebook's content review board
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📰 1 topic: Facebook’s content review board
Facebook will soon be rolling out its independent content review board. A Facebook Supreme Court, if you will. The basic way it works is this: Someone posts content on Facebook. Facebook itself reviews whether or not the content should be taken down. If the person who posted believes Facebook made the wrong decision, he can make an appeal. The Facebook Supreme Court reviews Facebook’s decision and issues a public, final decision.
To me, this is great both for consumers and for Facebook itself.
Good for consumers
Three years ago, Myanmar began a horrendous campaign of ethnic cleansing, killing thousands of the minority Rohingya Muslims and causing the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands. Facebook apparently played a role in fueling the violence, becoming a platform for hate and violent speech against the Rohingya. One morning, Facebook found out that certain sensational messages were being spread through Facebook Messenger. In response, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the call to “stop those messages from going through.”
At face value, Zuck’s action seems pretty innocuous. Who wouldn’t want to stop violent hate speech? Although I agree with the action at a surface level, I disagree with it on the principle that no one person should have the amount of power to control what people can and cannot see or say, especially in private communications. Indeed, as Cloudflare’s CEO honestly admitted after choosing to terminate service of an alt-right site: “Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet. No one should have that power.” As I’ve written previously:
[Internet] platforms should not be incentivized to exercise power and discretion in regulating content. Primarily, I’m mindful that such incredible power seems awesome when it’s working your way, but it’s awful when this power flips to the other side. Facebook controls the eyeballs of billions of people, and I’d rather remove this chokehold of power in the first place.
Much ink has been spilled about Zuck’s lack of accountability, given the shareholder structure of the company. The Myanmar incident shows that in the case of Facebook, one person — Zuck — has nearly plenary power to control what people see, without transparent, structural mechanisms in place to check that power.
The Facebook Supreme Court changes that. Its decisions are binding on the company, regardless of what Zuck happens to believe about a piece of content. Because the board’s decisions are publicly available, consumers and other stakeholders can ensure that Facebook is held accountable to the board’s ruling. Finally, the oversight board is composed of highly-qualified experts and comes to its decisions through well-reasoned principles. Such methodical decision-making is surely more consistent than ad hoc decision-making.
Good for Facebook
Let’s start with the obvious. Facebook has come under political attack from all sides. Democrats have attacked Facebook for not taking down enough content, and Republicans have attacked Facebook for discriminatorily taking down conservative content. With the content review board, though, Facebook can privately wash its hands clean while publicly pointing to the fact that content decisions are made by the board. This can garner political and public goodwill, translating into higher trust in the platform and even more favorable regulation.
I think the more interesting benefit to Facebook is that the content review board can lock-in Facebook’s position as the dominant global social network.
To begin, the oversight board will review content based only on Facebook’s own Community Standards. Note that the board doesn’t judge content based on some external standard set by the U.N. or by some other political entity, and it doesn’t judge content from other platforms (or at least not yet). As the board continues to make public decisions, using Facebook’s Community Standards as the guiding north star, and as people continue to post on Facebook and understand / abide by the Community Standards, these Community Standards will only become more and more entrenched as a gold standard for speech excellence on the Internet.
Another interesting point: Facebook Community Standards aren’t static — they’ll only “improve” with time. From the charter:
At the board’s discretion, the final decision may include a policy advisory statement, which will be taken into consideration by Facebook to guide its future policy development . . . Independent of any pending case, Facebook may request policy guidance from the board. This guidance may concern the clarification of a previous decision by the board or guidance on possible changes to Facebook’s content policies.
In other words, the board can provide input into how its rulings or how possible changes to the Community Standards would advance social, moral, economic, or other values. What you have, then, is dozens of the world’s most renowned legal, political, and anthropological scholars engaged with Facebook in a continual feedback loop to improve Facebook’s content policies. Of course, most tech companies nowadays already have extensive policy teams dedicated to working with regulators in crafting new policy, but my intuition is that the oversight board will be a competitive advantage for Facebook as it crafts new policy.
Facebook is entering the realm of power traditionally held by political entities. For instance, governments normally maintain and control their own money supply, but Facebook is creating Libra, a frictionless, decentralized cryptocurrency that can be used and transferred all around the world. Governments set the boundaries of freedom of expression within their own territories, but Facebook’s oversight board entrenches its community standards for freedom of expression online. Granted, Facebook explicitly says that it will take down speech that is illegal within a country. You can think of a country’s laws serving as a floor on speech, but for speech above that floor, it’s Facebook’s game and Facebook’s rules. It’s not too much a stretch of the imagination to see Facebook becoming a quasi-governmental online entity , with its Community Standards serving as the de facto global paragon for speech on the Internet.
I’ll end with a few hypotheticals: Could Facebook’s lock-in be so deep that the Community Standards are adopted by other platforms (like TikTok, Twitter, etc.,)? Will the review board organically expand its scope to review content on those other platforms? Will Facebook Supreme Court decisions eventually be as momentous as landmark SCOTUS decisions on topics like free speech? Going even further, will Facebook Supreme Court decisions actually influence SCOTUS decisions?
📚 5 articles
Facebook goes remote. Twitter and Square over the past couple of weeks also announced remote work policies. On one hand, I’m excited to see more tech talent move out of the Bay Area, increasing economic productivity in other parts of the world. On the other, I’m concerned about work productivity. Anecdotally, remote work just isn’t as engaging as in-person work.
More startup activity during COVID. Makes sense. (1) A lot of talented people have been laid off recently; (2) Even for those not laid off, remote work / remote school kinda’ sucks, so why not start your own thing?
The rise of virtual influencers. This is extremely interesting. Major Her vibes.
KKR invests $1.5bn in Reliance Jio. Can someone explain to me why over the past 5 weeks, Reliance Jio has received 5 separate ~$1bn investments from 5 separate entities (Facebook, Vista Equity, Silver Lake, General Atlantic, and now KKR)? I can understand needing to raise a lot of money, but why is the fundraising so staggered here?
University of California ends use of SAT / ACT. I’ve always thought standardized tests were a pretty dumb part of admissions. Here’s Ben Thompson’s contrary perspective, which I find pretty compelling:
