Meta’s oversight board was always going to be an experiment, an example of how external, independent oversight of social platforms’ moderation decisions could lead to a fairer path forward for social media apps.
But four years later, no one else seems to be addressing the issue, even though the oversight committee has influenced a range of Meta’s policies and outcomes and improved the company’s systems for addressing common problems and concerns.
This once again highlights why social platform moderation is difficult: without uniform rules that all platforms must adhere to, the process will remain a patchwork of different concepts with varying levels of impact.
Today, in the shadow of recent funding cuts, the Oversight Committee released its annual report, which outlines how its decisions have affected Meta’s policies and what it has managed to achieve, albeit on a small scale, in the area of social moderation.
According to the Board:
“2023 was a year of impact and innovation for the Board. Our recommendations continued to improve how people experience Meta’s platform, and by publishing more of our decisions in new formats, we addressed the tough questions of content moderation more than ever before. From protest slogans in Iran to criticism of gender-based violence, our decisions continued to protect important voices on Facebook and Instagram.”
In fact, according to the Oversight Committee, it issued more than 50 decisions in 2023, overturning Meta’s original decisions in roughly 90% of cases.
Given the size of Meta, this isn’t really a big deal, but it is still something, and these decisions influence Meta’s broader policies.
But even so, the committee can only operate on a small scale, and calls for a review of Meta’s moderation decisions remain strong.
As detailed here, the Commission received approximately 400,000 appeals in 2023 but was able to issue a decision in only 53 cases. This is not a direct comparison of impact because, as the Commission points out, the Commission is intended to hear cases that concern a wider range of cases, and any changes made as a result are not limited to that case. For example, a policy change could affect thousands of cases and be resolved or addressed without individual hearings.
But still, 400,000 appeals over four years shows that there is clearly a demand for some kind of judge or arbitrator to hear appeals against platforms’ moderation decisions.
That’s the purpose of the Oversight Committee project, to show regulators that an external appeals process is needed to take these decisions out of the hands of meta-executives. But no one seems to want to move the needle on this. Lawmakers and regulators continue to hold committee hearings and deliberations, but there’s no significant push to create a broader, more universal governing body for digital platform decisions.
That still seems like a better and fairer path forward, but at the same time, we would essentially need this kind of institution in every region to accommodate the different legal regulations and approaches.
That seems unlikely, and while the Oversight Committee appears to have proven the use cases and the value of an independent review of moderation calls and processes, it seems unlikely to change the broader approach by the government-appointed group.
And it looks like the board is losing funding, it’s shrinking, and eventually there will be no board at all, and these decisions will be put in the hands of the platform managers. Everyone will complain about it, and the CEOs will continue to be summoned before Congress every six months to be held accountable for failure.
But these solutions seem too complicated or too risky to implement, so they have no choice but to rely on fines and public censure to discipline the platforms, which has historically been ineffective.
And in the rapidly evolving age of AI, this seems even more unfeasible, but here too, no one seems to have taken up the role yet, despite the Oversight Committee pointing the way.
The Oversight Committee’s full 2023 report can be found here
