It said explicitly: “The same rules should apply to all users of the platform,” including political leaders. In its decision the FOB could not have been clearer (well, actually, it could have, but we’ll come back to that). It’s not surprising because it was basically the only option Facebook had unless it wanted to give a giant middle finger to the FOB. So it’s understandable that there was a lot of buzz about this “ sharp ” or “ major ” reversal.īut this interpretation misses that Facebook’s decision on this is not at all surprising and could result in little substantive change. This special treatment for politicians has long been one of Facebook’s most controversial policies. The response that is getting the most attention, and which leaked yesterday, is that Facebook is ending its presumption that speech from politicians is inherently “newsworthy,” and thus it is generally in the public interest for them to remain on the site even if they break Facebook’s rules. But the bottom line is in many of them, Facebook gives itself a gold star but they're really borderline passes at best. Here, I focus on the more significant recommendations and responses. Many of the responses are of a similar nature. Saying it will “ continue to consider the broader context of content from public figures” is an unsatisfactory response to the FOB’s recommendation that Facebook needs to do better in resisting “pressure from governments to silence their political opposition and consider the relevant political context” in making these decisions. But isn’t this really just a general thing that Facebook should be doing anyway? There is no deadline for follow-up or metrics for determining success. Facebook considers statements like “We are working to enhance our automated tools to improve our proactive review of content that could potentially impact public safety” as fully implementing a recommendation. This holds true with Facebook’s “responses” this time around. I’ve previously written about how Facebook’s interpretation of its own commitments is more generous than mine. The headline is that Facebook says it is “committed to fully implementing” 15 out of 19 recommendations, adopting one recommendation in part, still assessing two recommendations and taking no action on one. So, this post is about the 20-page document buried at the end of Facebook’s announcement today and those 20 pages constitute a largely milquetoast response from Facebook to the FOB’s substantial policy recommendations. If anything, I read the two-year suspension announcement as a distraction from the disappointing nature of the rest of what Facebook had to say in response to the Oversight Board decision. There will be more than enough commentary about that. Much of the public attention on Facebook’s responses today has focused on this.īut this post is not about the politics of the decision to suspend Trump’s account for 2 years. Today, Facebook bit the bullet early: it suspended Trump’s account for 2 years. The FOB gave Facebook six months to work it out. ![]() When the decision came out, much of the attention was focused on the fact that the FOB kicked the ball back to Facebook to decide what to do with Trump’s account. Today was the 30-day deadline for Facebook’s responses to the policy recommendations in the FOB’s decision on the suspension of Trump’s account. It’s Facebook’s responses that make clear whether it’s engaging in the FOB process in good faith or whether the FOB is just Facebook’s very expensive agony aunt whose advice it only follows when it feels like it. Despite often getting far less attention than the release of the decisions themselves, these responses are the most important part of the whole FOB experiment. The bulk and most consequential parts of the FOB’s decisions are non-binding policy recommendations Facebook need not abide by them but does have an obligation to respond to them within 30 days. One of the many ways that the Facebook Oversight Board (FOB) is different from many courts of law, let alone the Supreme Court, is that except on the narrowest of issues (the fate of the individual piece of content or account in a case) it doesn’t have the last word.
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