Facebook Oversight Board Publishes Decisions On First Cases

Back in December, Facebook’s independent Oversight Board took on its first cases. Its decisions on these cases are now published.

Late last year, Facebook’s Oversight Board announced the selection of its first six cases to review – five user appeals and one case referred by Facebook. The Board has now published its devisions on this first set of cases.

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In accordance with the bylaws, Facebook will now need to implement these decisions, wherever necessary – and has already restored content in three cases.

One piece of content was restored in December as it didn’t violate any of Facebook’s policies – and was removed in error.   

Facebook has 30 days to fully consider and respond to the Board’s recommendations and policy advisory statements.

The company will take time to understand the impact of each decision and update each Newsroom post about each of the cases, explaining how it has considered each.

Some recommendations will be put through a policy development process, while others might take a lot longer than 30 days to fully analyze.

Any implementation is very important, as it affects other similar or identical cases as well. In any case, implementation will take time.

Announced back in May of last year, Facebook’s Oversight Board is a body that makes content moderation decisions about appeals regarding blocked or removed content on the platform. It was proposed two years ago by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and the first board members were announced in May.