Highlight 4/2022 – Can Facebook’s « Supreme Court » succeed?
Jiaxu Mi, 25 January 2022
With more than 2 billion users worldwide, Facebook has faced a series of content problems in recent years. The social network has been accused of failing to fight against hate speech, misinformation, or incitement to terrorism, amongst others. For example, the company failed to combat hate speech against Rohingya and other Muslim communities in Myanmar.
Under this pressure, the US Senate held hearings on the use of technology and its impact on freedom of speech and the right to privacy from 2017 to 2019. However, the State’s regulatory power to change the functions of these platforms is limited. In response to this criticism, Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, committed to improve the public accountability mechanism of its social network. In 2018, he announced the establishment of a new supervision committee, the oversight board, composed of 40 independent experts. Members will be in office for three years, mainly to improve Facebook’s content.
The oversight board can force Facebook to provide confidential information. The lack of transparency has been one of the most consistent criticisms of Facebook’s content censorship. As an enforcement mechanism, the oversight board can play a role in changing this situation. The oversight board has also the capacity to make complaint response more efficient. Disputes in traditional courts or tribunals take months or even years to reach a final decision. This process will be greatly shortened through the complaint procedure of the oversight board. Besides, this procedure also makes the public increasingly aware of the possibilities, limitations and scope of application of content review.
The establishment of an oversight board is however controversial. Facebook has stressed that it has established an external fund to cover the board’s expenses and avoid Facebook paying the salaries of board members directly. However, all members of the board are selected by Facebook, the fund comes from Facebook, and the « law » followed by the « court » is formulated by Facebook itself. Therefore, the independence of the oversight board is unconvincing. Furthermore, it remains difficult to guarantee that private undertakings will take full responsibility for their actions. It is even more complex to make them bear the heavy responsibility of preserving the freedom of speech. Whether the task of supervising compliance with human rights can be entrusted to private undertakings or whether it should remain a State responsibility is controversial.
The oversight board can help Facebook to handle controversial complaints and improve the credibility of social networking. The key question is whether the oversight board will address problems that may conflict with Facebook’s business interests. While the board has the potential to contribute to the global promotion of the freedom of speech, it is essential that this new body preserves essential procedural guarantees and provides adequate cooperation mechanisms with public bodies.
Jiaxu Mi, Highlight 4/2022 – Can Facebook’s « Supreme Court » succeed?, 25 January 2022, available at www.meig.ch
The views expressed in the MEIG Highlights are personal to the author and neither reflect the positions of the MEIG Programme nor those of the University of Geneva.