2/19/2023 0 Comments Facebook oversightThe political historian David Runciman closes his book How Democracy Ends with a provocative thought: He argues that Facebook’s drive to maximize profits above other considerations, the way it rewards populist politicians, and its nourishment of conspiracy theories makes “Mark Zuckerberg a bigger threat to American democracy than Donald Trump.” The latest ruling does nothing to dispel the idea of Zuckerberg-Facebook’s founder, CEO, and effectively its controlling shareholder-wielding huge, arbitrary power over billions of users. He misses being on social media so much that his team created a weird blog encouraging readers to reshare its posts on services from which he is banned. The former president spent $160 million on Facebook ads in 2020, compared with $117 million by Joe Biden, and submitted a lengthy appeal to the board, arguing that his suspension was unfair. Trump believes that getting back on Facebook is “the linchpin to his fundraising and online political strategy,” according to Jonathan Swan and Sara Fischer of Axios. Yet this is the forum in which the next U.S. And unlike a real court, it has no powers to compel Facebook to testify, or to disclose evidence, or indeed to do anything at all. The board is not supposed to offer unsolicited advice like “Hey, have you guys ever thought that the way the News Feed functions might be bad for democracy?” or “Is it possible that Facebook is too big and too dominant to exist?” The oversight board cannot make laws, or set broader policies. Of the 46 questions the board asked Facebook about Trump’s suspension, the company declined to answer seven entirely and two partially-including whether its design decisions contributed to the events of January 6. The cases it considers are referred to it by Facebook, and it relies on Facebook for the information needed to investigate them. It is funded (through an arm’s-length trust) by Facebook. For now, the board is the best restraint we have-but that isn’t saying much.įacebook set up the oversight board in 2018, in response to a rash of bad headlines, and the board began operation a month before the 2020 U.S. American lawmakers have consistently failed to grapple with the unprecedented challenges posed by regulating Facebook, and sometimes they barely seem to understand what it does. What applies to Trump will have to apply to Narendra Modi of India, and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, and any other leader inclined to use this powerful platform for their own ends. With more than 2 billion users, Facebook is setting speech standards around the world. Which is this: Lives depend on what unnamed, unelected people in a single corporation decide is acceptable speech, based on rules that were drawn up in secret and in response to situations no one could have envisaged in a dorm room in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in February 2004. It can try to solve Facebook’s problems, but it can’t solve the problem of Facebook. Yet the board also tacitly acknowledged today that it is a Potemkin court-nothing more than an advisory service to a company that doesn’t have to take any notice of anything it says. The oversight board has been called Facebook’s “ Supreme Court,” and the sad fact is that its judgments matter far more than those of the highest courts in many sovereign nations. But the board has given Facebook six months to “reexamine the arbitrary penalty it imposed on January 7 and decide the appropriate penalty.” No hiding behind the judgment of outsiders when Republican politicians complain about “anti-conservative bias,” or when other world leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel worry about the precedent of a corporation pulling the plug on an elected politician-Facebook will have to tell us what its own red lines are. Asked to rule on the suspension of Donald Trump’s account in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot, it passed the ultimate decision back to Facebook.įor now, Trump’s suspension stays in place. Facebook’s oversight board earlier today declined to act as a human shield for the social network.
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