‘Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities’: Tech giant is criticised by its OWN oversight body for algorithms and technical features which promote extremist content
- Facebook’s oversight board upheld a ban on Donald Trump using the platform
- The board criticised Facebook for applying vague penalties like the Trump ban
- They said Facebook was avoiding its responsibilities by sending final decisions to the board to resolve whether the ban should be upheld or whether it is right
- Critics of Facebook say the board has too narrow of a focus to tackle extremism
Facebook’s own oversight board has called out the social media giant, saying that ‘Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities’ over extremist content promotion.
The board, which some have dubbed Facebook’s ‘supreme court’, rules on whether some individual pieces of content should be displayed on the site.
The oversight board hit the news on Wednesday after it upheld a Facebook ban imposed on former Present Donald Trump, stopping him using the platform.
The board wrote ‘in applying a vague, standardless penalty and then referring this case to the Board to resolve, Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities.’
But critics aren’t convinced that the board’s decision over Donald Trump’s ban represents a triumph of accountability, saying it has too narrow of a focus.
This poses a distraction from deeper problems such as Facebook’s massive power, its shadowy algorithms that can amplify hate and misinformation, and more serious and complicated questions about government regulation experts warn.
‘It’s much easier to talk about Donald Trump’ than about Facebook’s business, said Color Of Change President Rashad Robinson, a longtime critic of Facebook.
Facebook’s own oversight board has called out the social media giant, saying that ‘Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities’ over extremist content promotion
New Trump Twitter account is SUSPENDED after Facebook Oversight Committee upholds ban
A Twitter account purportedly made by Donald Trump’s communications team has been suspended just one day after it was created.
The account, @DJTDesk, was said to have been set up to share statements from the former President which will also be published on his new website – ‘From the Desk of Donald J. Trump’.
That website, which was launched earlier this week, allows fans to repost Trump’s statements to their own Facebook and Twitter feeds.
But while that feature still appears to be active, the @DJTDesk account was suspended Wednesday evening for ‘violating Twitter rules’, according to reporter Andrew Solender.
Trump – who was a prolific user of Twitter and boasted 88 million followers – was suspended from Twitter in January, following the US Capitol riot.
‘They want to keep us in conversation about this piece of content or that piece of content, that this is about freedom of speech rather than about algorithms amplifying certain types of content,’ explained Robison.
He described the Facebook regulatory board as a ‘ruse to starve off regulatory action’ from various governments around the world.
Coming after months of deliberation and nearly 10,000 public comments on the matter, the board’s decision on Trump told Facebook to specify how long the suspension of his account would last.
The group told Facebook that its ‘indefinite’ ban on Trump was unreasonable.
The ruling, which gives Facebook six months to comply, effectively postpones any possible Trump reinstatement and puts the onus for that back on the company.
‘They made the right choice,’ said Yael Eisenstat, a former CIA officer who worked for six months in 2018 as Facebook’s global head for election-integrity operations for political advertising and is now a researcher at Betalab.
But the focus on the oversight-board process, she said, gives Facebook exactly what it wants.
‘We’re diverting our time, attention and energy away from the more important discussion about how to hold the company accountable for their own tools, designs and business decisions that helped spread dangerous conspiracy theories,’ she said.
Facebook said it has publicly made clear that the oversight board is not a replacement for regulation.
‘We established the independent Oversight Board to apply accountability and scrutiny of our actions,’ the company said in a statement.
‘It is the first body of its kind in the world: an expert-led independent organization with the power to impose binding decisions on a private social media company.’
One major source of concern among Facebook critics: The oversight board reported that the company refused to answer detailed questions about how its technical features and advertising-based business model might also amplify extremism.
The watchdog group Public Citizen said it was troubling that Facebook declined, for instance, to say how its news feed affected the visibility of Trump’s posts.
Trump has now been left to communicate with the public via personal statements which will be published on his new website, ‘From The Desk of Donald J. Trump’
Trump launches new website called ‘From the Desk of Donald J. Trump’
Donald Trump launched a new communications platform on Tuesday called ‘From the Desk of Donald J. Trump’, which gets around his social media bans by allowing supporters to share his statements on Twitter and Facebook.
The former president unveiled the website where only he can upload content, and doesn’t let users interact, as he teased to supporters they will be ‘very, very happy’ when they hear his decision about running for the White House again.
The new webpage, www.DonaldJTrump.com/desk, allows his fans to repost the statements Trump has been emailing to reporters to their Facebook and Twitter feeds since he was suspended from the platforms.
The webpage is referred to as a ‘beacon of freedom’ in a time of ‘lies and silence’ in a promotional video, which shows imagery of Mar-a-Lago, where the former president has been living since leaving the White House.
When users sign up for alerts, they are directed to a page asking for campaign donations. As of Tuesday night he had only posted the video and a collection of his recent statements.
‘Not everybody sees what any individual posts, so the algorithms decide who sees it, how they see it, when they see it and Facebook presumably has all kinds of information about the engagement,’ said Public Citizen president, Robert Weissman.
‘The company owes us all a post mortem on the way Facebook is used and operated – did it amplify what Trump was saying and contribute to the insurrection.’
Another worry raised by experts is how Facebook’s actions resonate overseas and whether decisions are accountable to international human rights norms.
‘The question that everybody’s asking is if Facebook is in a lucrative market and is confronted with a political leader who incites violence, will Facebook choose human rights and human safety above its bottom line?’ said Chinmayi Arun.
The fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project added: ‘It’s fair to say a former US president is not the only world leader seen as inciting violence.’
Facebook created the oversight panel to rule on thorny content issues following widespread criticism of its mishandling of misinformation, hate speech and nefarious influence campaigns on its platform.
The Trump decision was the board’s 10th since it began taking on cases late last year, with the previous nine favouring free expression over restriction of content.
The company funds the board through an ‘independent trust’ and its 20 members, which will grow to 40, includes former politicians, journalists and scholars.
Among the 20 are a former prime minister of Denmark, the former editor-in-chief of the Guardian newspaper, plus legal scholars, human rights experts and journalists.
The first four board members were directly chosen by Facebook. Those four then worked with Facebook to select additional members.
The oversight board hit the news on Wednesday after it upheld a Facebook ban imposed on former Present Donald Trump, stopping him using the platform
Facebook’s most prominent critics – including misinformation researchers, academics and activists – are notably missing from the roster.
‘These are very smart and capable people who put themselves on this board,’ Robinson said. But, he added , ‘the oversight board is a bunch of Mark Zuckerberg consultants. He hired them, he paid for them and he can get rid of them if he wants.’
Board spokesman Dex Hunter-Torricke, a former speechwriter for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, urged critics to judge the board on the decisions it makes.
‘This is not a group of people who feel any obligation to go soft on the company.’
In Wednesday’s decision, he added, ‘the board has very clearly said Facebook broke the rules as well as Mr Trump, and that’s not appropriate.’
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT FACEBOOK’S CONTENT OVERSIGHT BOARD
WHAT DOES THE OVERSIGHT BOARD REVIEW?
The board, which some have dubbed Facebook’s ‘supreme court’, rules on whether some individual pieces of content should be displayed on the site. It can also recommend changes to Facebook’s content policy, based on a case decision or at the company’s request.
The board reviews posts, videos, photos and comments that the company has decided to remove from Facebook or its photo-sharing site Instagram, as well as cases where content was left up.
This could be content involving issues such as nudity, violence or hate speech. Facebook has said the board’s remit will in future include ads, groups, pages, profiles and events, but has not given a time frame.
It will not deal with Instagram direct messages, Facebook’s messaging platforms WhatsApp, Messenger, its dating service or its Oculus virtual reality products.
Facebook expects the board will initially take on only ‘dozens’ of cases, a small percentage of the thousands it expects will eventually be brought to the board. In 2019, users appealed more than 10 million pieces of content that Facebook removed or took action on.
But Facebook’s head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, previously told Reuters he thought the cases chosen would have a wider relevance to patterns of content disputes.
HOW DOES THE BOARD WORK?
The board decides which cases it reviews, which can be referred either by a user who has exhausted Facebook’s normal appeals process or by Facebook itself for cases that might be ‘significant and difficult’.
Users who disagree with Facebook’s final decision on their content have 15 days to submit a case to the board through the board’s website.
Each case is reviewed by a panel of five members, with at least one from the same geographic region as the case originated.
The panel can ask for subject matter experts to help make its decision, which then must be finalised by the whole board.
The board’s case decision – which is binding unless it could violate the law – must be made and implemented within 90 days, though Facebook can ask for a 30-day expedited review for exceptional cases, including those with ‘urgent real-world consequences’.
Users will be notified of the board’s ruling on their case and the board will publicly publish the decision.
When the board gives policy recommendations, Facebook will give public updates and publish a response on the guidance and follow-on action within 30 days.
For more details on the board’s operations, see Facebook’s proposed bylaws.
WHO IS ON THE OVERSIGHT BOARD?
The board will eventually have about 40 members.
Facebook chose the four co-chairs – former US federal circuit judge Michael McConnell and constitutional law expert Jamal Greene from the United States, Colombian attorney Catalina Botero-Marino and former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt – who then jointly selected the other 16 members named so far.
Some were sourced from the global consultations conducted by Facebook to obtain feedback on the oversight board.
The members, who are part-time, so far include constitutional law experts, civil rights advocates, academics, journalists, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and a former judge of the European Court of Human Rights.
The members are paid by a trust that Facebook has created and will serve three-year terms for a maximum of nine years.
The trustees can remove a member before the end of their term for violating the board’s code of conduct, but not for content decisions.
Thomas Hughes, former executive director for freedom of expression rights group Article 19, was appointed to oversee the board’s full-time administrative staff.
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