Facebook has mentioned that enforcing policies against “hate speech” is one of its priorities.
In a new announcement released on Facebook’s blog, the platform stated that it was looking into creating a board to help determine content policing. A draft charter, drawn up by Facebook Vice President Nick Clegg, started by saying, “Every day, teams at Facebook make difficult decisions about what content should stay up and what should come down.” In order to continue censoring content, Facebook said that it was considering making an “external board” of at least 40 “global experts.”
These experts would be people with experience in certain areas, specifically content, freedom of speech, privacy, human rights, journalism, civil rights, and safety. Facebook assured readers that “The list of members will always be public.” These members will also allegedly be diverse in “cultural balance and geographic balance.” But nothing was said about a balance in perspective.
In order to determine who those members will be, the blog post announced that the platform will host “a series of workshops around the world where we will convene experts and organizations.” This effort will take place over the course of six months.
The set up of the board seems to be similar to a Supreme Court situation. The panel must have a “majority agreement” to hear “cases” about content. The cases must be difficult ones that are policy related. Facebook apparently still has the right to decide what stays and what goes, overall.
“The board can’t realistically review every decision that someone disagrees with,” stated the draft. “Millions of decisions” are being made every week about what stays and what goes, according to Facebook.
Given that in the past, Facebook has removed almost all posts advocating for a traditional stance on gender and marriage, the question remains. Just how ideologically diverse will its initiative be?
