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Critics of Facebook, including organizers of an advertising boycott against the company, launched their own oversight board on Friday to review the company’s content moderation practices.
The launch comes a day after Facebook’s officially mandated Oversight Board said it would start work in mid-October, nearly a year late.
The new group, which calls itself the “Facebook Royal Oversight Board,” counts among its initial members the heads of three US civil rights groups, the former Estonian president and Facebook’s former head of electoral integrity.
The delay in the launch of the official Facebook-funded board means that cases related to the November 3 US elections, which have generated some of the most contentious issues facing the world’s largest social network, are unlikely to be reviewed. .
The rival board plans to move faster, it said in a statement. It will hold its first general meeting next week and will focus directly on electoral issues, including voter suppression, electoral security and misinformation, she said.
Facebook “responds to criticism with bad faith statements and cosmetic changes,” said board member Roger McNamee, one of the first investors in Facebook who became critical of its leaders for their handling of misuse of the platform in the 2016 elections.
“The Royal Oversight Board will act as a watchdog, helping legislators and consumers defend themselves against a rogue platform.”
The rival board members plan to broadcast their meetings on weekly shows on Facebook Live, according to the statement.
A spokesperson for the Facebook company responded in a statement on Friday.
“We conducted a one-year global consultation to establish the Oversight Board as an enduring institution that will provide binding and independent oversight over some of our most difficult content decisions,” he said. “This new endeavor consists primarily of longtime critics creating a new channel for existing critiques.”
The new group said it was being funded by Luminate, a philanthropy backed by The Omidyar Group, but did not disclose a funding amount.
Facebook has committed $ 130 million to its Oversight Board project, which it said would cover operating costs for at least six years.
© Thomson Reuters 2020
