T
ThinkingSapien
Guest
Facebook’s Oversight Board says it won’t be ready until ‘late fall’
Not like there’s an election happening, or anything.
Facebook's Oversight Board says it won't be ready until 'late fall'
Facebook's Oversight Board is still in the works, but it unfortunately won't launch until late Fall.
www.engadget.com
Facebook made the motto “move fast and break things” the de facto philosophy for Silicon Valley, but its Oversight Board apparently can’t move quickly and fix things. The Board, which will independently oversee content moderation across Facebook’s platforms, announced on Twitter that it wouldn’t be up and running until “late Fall.” And most likely, that’ll be a point after the 2020 U.S. presidential election — something many were hoping the Oversight Board would help with.
"We don’t expect the Board to regularly share opinions outside of our decisions on content and policy recommendations to Facebook,” the Board added. "Our focus is on building a strong institution that will deliver concrete results over the long-term.”
Much like how Facebook failed its own audit regarding civil rights and hate speech today, the Board announcement is disappointing for anyone who hoped for stronger content enforcement on the company’s social networks. In 2017, we learned that Facebook was well aware of Russian meddling long before the 2016 election began, but the company did little to stop those efforts. Zuckerberg’s handling of Donald Trump’s tweets around May’s Black Lives Matter protests made it clear he was sticking with a “hands off” approach. Facebook allowed posts that Twitter chose to hide, claiming that they glorified violence.
More recently, Facebook pulled Trump campaign ads because they violated the company’s hate speech policy. That’s a sign the company might finally be willing to push back against notable public figures. The widespread advertiser boycott, #StopHateforProfit (which Engadget’s parent company Verizon also signed), also led Facebook to say it would expand its hate speech policy for ads and work harder to fight against voter suppression.
[…]