Facebook’s independent Oversight Board said Monday it will make it easier for users to ask to remove content they don’t like, giving the board heightened powers and increasing the amount of censorship possible on Facebook.
The board will now let users report content for removal to the board that Facebook has decided should stay up on the platform and on Instagram, which marks a long-awaited expansion of the board’s initial role. The new content appeal process will start Monday and roll out fully over the coming weeks.
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“As originally contemplated by the Oversight Board’s bylaws, the board can now review Facebook’s decision to leave content on the platform — content eligible for appeal to the board still includes posts/statuses, photos, videos, comments, and shares,” Facebook announced in a press release on Tuesday.
The Oversight Board was announced in 2018 by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a separate entity that would handle decisions involving content moderation. The board selected its 20 members in 2020 from an assortment of people with backgrounds in media, law, and international policy before starting operations in October that same year.
The tech company said that if someone “does not think that a piece of content should be on Facebook or Instagram,” that person can first report the content to Facebook. If the platform decides to keep the content up even after its initial review, the reporting person can then go to the Oversight Board to appeal Facebook’s content decision.
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The appeals process will allow for multiple people to report the same piece of content, each citing different reasons, and these reports will be compiled into a single case file for the board. The process will occur in a “privacy-conscious manner,” Facebook said.
