Facebook's content-oversight board will have its own staff of 30-40, budget and a trust to manage it all
IN NOVEMBER 1999 the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers , which oversees the web’s address book, held its inaugural annual gathering. Two decades later the online world faces another constitutional moment, this time spearheaded by a company which has profited from the internet’s stupendous growth—and is blamed for many of its ills, from privacy abuses to the spread of disinformation.
The board certainly looks like a serious effort at institution-building—something “no firm has ever done before”, in the words of Kate Klonick of St. John’s University School of Law in New York, who was allowed to play fly on the wall as the board’s contours were drawn up. Facebook hired a team of 12 people, most of them lawyers, to oversee the oversight body’s creation. Some used to work at the White House and the UN; others came from media firms and consultancies.
Each submission triggers a 90-day process. The emergency requests will be handled faster: in 30 days. If the board agrees to hear a case, a group of five members consults experts and makes a decision, which it must present in plain language. Facebook has a week to comply with a ruling . The board can also make “policy recommendations”, such as amending Facebook’s “community standards”. Though non-binding, the firm will have to explain itself publicly if it chooses to ignore them.
Most important of all, how powerful and independent will Facebook allow the board to become? And how will it affect the firm’s business? The answer to both is: not much, for now. The board’s decisions will be based not on real-world laws but on the community standards, which are vague.
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