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The question of what content should be allowed on Facebook has characterized the company for years. Nudity, racism, harassment and terrorist propaganda: With billions of users worldwide, Facebook faces a lot of limits on what to remove and what to delete.
So when Facebook last year unveiled its latest move to tackle the issue, it came up as an attempt by Alexanderhugg: A new independent group of administrators would operate much the same way as a Supreme Court. Anyone who is not satisfied with Facebook’s decision should be able to appeal there. The Council’s decision is final, it will guide future decisions and no one, not even Mark Zuckerberg personally, should be able to change it.
So should the standards because when criticism crosses the threshold of threats, when a political message must be classified as terrorist incitement and when misinformation is so dangerous that it must be considered as prohibited disinformation.
Former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt is part of the group.
Photo: Eva Tedesjö
Now the first 20 people to be included on the council “surveillance board“As it is called, featured. There are academics, lawyers, activists and journalists and some politicians. There are former Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger and former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt. There is Tawakkol Karman, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.
Facebook has invited her own critics: for example, Pakistani activist Nighat Dad, who when I interviewed her a few years ago, condemned the Facebook project to provide free internet access in poor countries as cynical tricks to dominate a future market.
The others are mostly lawyers, former judges, and teachers. They represent all parts of the world and speak 16 of the 20 largest languages in the world, according to the Facebook summary.
At this stage, Facebook is involved in creating the board, but once it is in place, it must independently make decisions and appoint successors on its own. In this way, members must be free of the business objectives of the company. That is the promise.
During the first half of 2020, users should be able to start appealing Facebook’s decision to the Council. Even Swedes. The fact that the system is applied to Facebook members worldwide is one of the reasons why the Council is elected from so many countries.
Sound hard to believe? A promotional coup to avoid regulation? A pig made up? Would Facebook really relinquish control over the content of its own service?
No, rather, Facebook has accomplished an amazing little circus trick. Because although you should never be sure of anything about Facebook, most of it indicates that this forum will get great, if not complete, independence. But that does not mean what one might think. Because here’s the thing: It’s the easiest way to get out of this Facebook soup, and it really doesn’t cost you a thing.
The criticism directed at Facebook can, for simplicity, be summarized in two categories.
In part, how the controversial material is handled, for which the new Council will be responsible.
On the one hand, how the private data of users is abused, of which the Cambridge Analytica scandal is the best known example.
The two categories It has almost nothing to do with each other. They are based on different problems and have different solutions. Above all, and this is important, Facebook critics demand completely different solutions for them.
When it comes to controversial material, the criticism is that Facebook hides behind a facade and sees itself as an anonymous tech company with no other special role. “But you are a media company and the world’s largest communication platform,” critics generally criticize. Requirement: recognize it and take responsibility for it. Or, to put it another way: take a more active role.
When it comes to misuse of private data and little respect for users’ personal privacy, the requirement is often the opposite: Facebook can’t be trusted, the company has gone so many times to make money from everything they know about its users, that someone has to lower their foot. Regulation in some way, some want to see. Or to put it another way: Facebook has to take one Less Active role.
So Facebook leaves control, but it does so in the area where critics demand a more active role, not a lesser one. Of course, it’s only practical to be able to transfer the strenuous freedom of expression issues to an independent group and commit to what Facebook does best and more: earn billions of users’ personal data. And there he does not allow any independent council to make decisions that Mark Zuckerberg cannot stop.
