Author: Marta Maroni, Phd candidate in Constitutional Law, Faculty of law, University of Helsinki *
After
announcing the idea less than a year ago, Facebook has unveiled its experiment
to establish an independent Oversight
Board, known as the “Facebook Supreme Court”, which will decide over content
moderation issues.[1] In
other words, when users are unhappy about the removal of their content posted
on Facebook, they are granted a second chance: the possibility of appealing to
the established Oversight Board and the decision will be binding on Facebook
itself.
Second chances are indeed welcome. They sound fairer for those whose
content has been removed, and at the same time, they also forge a space for
some self-reflection for Facebook itself: an additional assessment of its own
decisions to remove content might be needed. The Oversight Board might be a
plus in light of the intense use that Facebook makes of AI to “proactively
enforce policies”,[2] given
AI’s ability to identify and remove harmful content, or generally content which
is against the Community Standards, a global list of rules that determine what content stays up and what comes
down on Facebook[3] The Oversight
Board might help to prevent public scandals caused by wrong and quick decisions.
In addition, the creation of the Oversight Board meets the request of International
Human Rights Bodies which encourage self-regulation as a regulatory model and requested
platforms to provide “access to
remedies and redresses for the decision adopted by platforms”. For example, the CM/Rec(2018)2 of the Committee of Ministers to
member States on the roles and responsibilities of internet intermediaries”
remarks that
“[They] [Platforms] should furthermore ensure that intermediaries provide
users or affected parties with access to prompt, transparent and effective
reviews for their grievances and alleged terms of service violations, and
provide for effective remedies, such as the restoration of content, apology,
rectification or compensation for damages. Judicial review should remain
available, when internal and alternative dispute settlement mechanisms prove
insufficient or when the affected parties opt for judicial redress or appeal”[4]
Regardless
of these beneficial aspects, one cannot help but feel uneasy about the Facebook’s
Oversight Board, its attempt to enhance and legitimize its position of power by
strengthening those “values” that contribute to Facebook activities. Rightly, one
might notice that Facebook’s Oversight Board cannot substitute the role of the
domestic courts and public intervention will not indeed disappear. While Facebook-Oversight-Board redress mechanisms within
the sphere of “content moderation” is unique in its genre, the overall dynamic looks
rather familiar to transnational law studies, which can thus offer
some insights on private companies’ self-constitutionalizing tendency. Bearing in mind previous experience helps to anticipate
potential problems that might emerge when
Facebook’s Board becomes operative.
Drawing
on Teubner’s Societal Constitutionalism,
one might realise how a private organization develops its
own set or understanding of fundamental rights, coupled with stronger administrative
procedures to reinforce its organization’s position, legitimacy and autonomy. Teubner’s
description of these dynamics suits this case very well as he illustrates how
the emergence of what he calls self-contained regimes is intertwined with the creation of substantive
rules in special fields of law, and the production of procedural norms.[5]
Teubner’s
model can be inspirational for analysing Facebook’s Court, where 1) a parallelism
can be drawn between the substantive
rules and Facebook community
standards and 2) Artificial Intelligence
and the Oversight Board are administrative tools meant to be functional
towards the ends of enforcing and implementing Facebook community standards. These
standards, in turn, express Facebook’s understanding of what counts for freedom
of expression. If community standards are drafted in order to promote freedom
of expression, they also promise to keep Facebook a safe place,[6] and consequently they do not allow hate speech,
terrorist content and now misinformation. Whereas moderation is necessary, and
the platforms are in the best position to exert control over content, the problem
might turn out to be that Facebook develops its own standards for freedom of
expression regardless of the protection that different legal cultures afford
it.
It is noticeable that, together with the launch of
this “Court”, Facebook has refined its own
community standards, which Facebook’s Oversight Board is bound to
implement. In this light, Facebook’s values would guide the decisions of the Board.
Human rights are somehow in the picture,[7]
but it will also be important to assess how they are qualitatively understood
and elaborated, because the framework adopted by Facebook requires members of the Board to “ensure their commitment to the principles
they must uphold”.[8]
This framing could potentially weaken the decisional autonomy
of the members, as they have less room for manoeuvre to analyse cases beyond
Facebook polices. Because community standards are limited, the Board members do
not have much space for judgments based on wider consideration of interests,
rights, experience and conflicts.
In a nutshell, according to the current Board Charter,
the Board has no mandate to shape and challenge Facebook Community Standards. The
Board has an advisory capacity which
can be provided upon Facebook’s request and
in case one of its resolutions includes policy guidance, and yet Facebook
will analyse the suggestion according to its formal policy.[9]
In addition, Facebook is not bound to implement a Board’s decision to
“identical content with parallel context”.[10]
Scholars
have also argued how the Board’s capacity to assess moderation problems is restricted
to content which has been removed and does not apply to any evaluation
concerning what stays up, political ads, nor does the Board have the
possibility to assess the way algorithms arrange the visibility of information.[11]
In such a setting, the Board merely has the role of
checking whether or not Facebook complies with its own rules, and this
corroborates the idea that the Board is constructed to protect Facebook as
such.
One might correctly claim that this is a premature
evaluation, since we are still missing important Governing Documents of the Board (the Bylaws, Code of conduct of the Members[12]) which
will confirm, or not, this interpretation of the Board as a device for Facebook
self-reinforcing rationale. However, Facebook anticipated this strategy in “A
blueprint for content Governance and Enforcement”,[13] where
it emphasises the need to reduce human
subjectivity and have consistent decisions adopted according to the community
standards, which are ultimately adopted by Facebook.[14]
It goes without saying that
the use of AI is at the core of Facebook “perfect enforcement” of its community
standards and this is mostly done proactively,
that is, even before the allegedly illegal content is visible. If indeed none
want to be exposed to terroristic or harmful content, again, AI might be used
to eliminate content that is also protected by freedom of expression, but this Facebook
does not regard as such.
To check the concreteness
of the underlying critique, let us consider a few characteristics of the Oversight
Board Charter.
1) Facebook has a set of
values that guide its content policies and decisions. The Board will review
content enforcement decisions and determine whether they are consistent with
Facebook’s content policies and values.
Elsewhere, the Charter also reiterates that “The board will review and decide on content in accordance with
Facebook’s content policies and values”.[15]
2)
The Charter indicates that the Board “Interpret[s] Facebook’s Community Standards and other relevant policies (collectively referred to
as “content policies”) and this interpretation is done considering “Facebook’s articulated values”.
3) The Charter further establishes that “Facebook’s content policies and values” are the basis for
the Board’s decision-making. The Charter recognizes an important role for “precedents”
and establishes that, “For each decision, any prior board decisions will have
precedential value and should be viewed as highly persuasive when the facts,
applicable policies, or other factors are substantially similar.”[16]
Whilst precedents enable continuity of
the Board decisions, they will also keep re-routing the
Board actions in the same direction over and over again.
In this way the whole machinery, that is AI
proactive enforcement, the Board and Facebook’s community standards, become a
self-enhancing device for strengthening Facebook policies.
This criticism is not an end
in itself, but it is raised in light of the consequences that Facebook
activities have globally. Whereas Facebook remains a private platform, it still
has 2.4 billion regular global users, and it is one of the main internet actors
in terms of network capacity, whose impact in terms of freedom of expression, politics,
and political economy has been widely discussed.
The criticism raised above seems to clash with
Facebook’s intent to establish a body “designed to oversee important matters of expression and to make
independent final decisions”.[17]
As article
1 states, “The board
will be composed of a diverse set of members whose names will be public. They
will exercise neutral, independent
judgment and render decisions impartially.”[18]
Yet to assess the neutrality and impartiality of the Board one might focus on
three questions while reading the Charter: how is independence insured? Who decides that the decisions are neutral
and impartial? Who appoints the Board?
On The independence of the Board
Admittedly,
the charter formally offers
guarantees of independence.
For example, Members
must not have conflicts of interests that could compromise their independent
judgment. Although their membership is public, the panel decision “will remain
anonymous to ensure the safety and independent judgment of panel members” and a
Member’s compensation is not dependent on the outcome of decisions. Finally, the
Board will have discretionary power in the choice, but it will mostly have to
select the ones with the greatest potential to guide future decisions and
policies. A drawback might lie in the
three-year contract, with possible renewal, which could affect (but not
necessarily) the independence of the Members of the Board, because it could make
the duration of their contract dependent on their performance.
The Substantive side of independence is the most
troublesome, and it is relevant for the whole narrative pursued by Facebook.
Facebook will establish a Trust to ensure the governance and accountability of the Board.[19]
Facebook will also both appoint the trustee
and fund the trust, which formally
appoints the Board, whose members are again chosen by Facebook.
Facebook will first
select a group of co-chairs, and together with the co-chairs, Facebook will
select the candidate to serve as Board Members. On top of this, Facebook and
the public can suggest candidates for the Board. Facebook’s position to
remotely control the Board is contrary to the traditional understanding of independence
under constitutional law.
So far, the design of the Board suggests that the members might not enjoy autonomy in their professional judgements, nor that the Board is independent of Facebook. Further scrutiny might be required to check that the Board does not become a tool to reinforce Facebook’s position as regards global regulatory problems and the interpretation of what counts as freedom of expression.
*Marta Maroni Would like to acknowledge the support received from Reconfiguring Privacy – A Study of the Political Foundations of Privacy Regulation-funded by the University of Helsinki
[1] For a more optimistic
and detailed reading see Evelyn, Facebook’s ‘Oversight Board:’ Move Fast with
Stable Infrastructure and Humility (4 April 2019). North Carolina Journal of
Law and Technology, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2019.
[2] Mark
Zuckerberg Proactively Identifying Harmful Content A Blueprint
for Content Governance and Enforcement. Zuckerberg’s plan is to develop
the technology further so “as to
understand content well enough to proactively remove harmful content and reduce
the distribution of borderline content”, and only later render it more flexible
in its standards. See https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-blueprint-for-content-governance-and-enforcement/10156443129621634/?hc_location=ufi;
[3] Zuckerberg,
Community Standards in A Blueprint for Content Governance and Enforcement.
[4] Access to
an effective remedy CM/Rec(2018)2,
Recommendation CM/Rec(2018)2
of the Committee of Ministers to member States on the roles and
responsibilities of internet intermediaries
(Adopted by
the Committee of Ministers on 7 March 2018 at the 1309th meeting of the
Ministers’ Deputies).
[5]
Teubner, Fragmented Foundation, Societal Constitutionalism beyond the Nation
State in Dobner P and Loughlin M, The Twilight Of
Constitutionalism? (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 33; I should point
out that Teubner is not necessarily critical of these dynamics.
[6] Monika
Bickert, Publishing Our Internal Enforcement Guidelines and Expanding Our
Appeals Process https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/04/comprehensive-community-standards/
[7] Facebook’s
commitment to the Oversight Board https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/letter-from-mark-zuckerberg-on-oversight-board-charter.pdf
[8] A Blueprint
for Content Governance and Enforcement.
[9] Art.
4.
[10] Oversight Board Charter, Article 4.
Implementation.
[11] Evelyn
Douek, How Much Power Did Facebook Give Its Oversight Board? in https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-much-power-did-facebook-give-its-oversight-board and
Weinzierl, Quirin: Difficult Times Ahead for the Facebook “Supreme Court”,
VerfBlog, 2019/9/21, https://verfassungsblog.de/difficult-times-ahead-for-the-facebook-supreme-court/.
[12] These will
be adopted by the Members of the Board with some input from Facebook.
[13] https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-blueprint-for-content-governance-and-enforcement/10156443129621634/
[14]
https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-blueprint-for-content-g...
[15] Oversight
Board Charter Article 2.
Authority to Review.
[16] Oversight Board Charter Article 2. sect. 2.
[17] Oversight
Board Charter.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Oversight
Board Charter, Article 5, Section 2.
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