Dailycsr.com – 27 December 2019 – In a joint blog the managing director, “Dunstan Allison-Hope, the manager Michaela Lee and associate of BSR Joanna reviews the function of oversight board of Facebook from a human rights point of view.
Facebook, the giant social media platform, has to constantly decide on which posts or comments to be kept on the forum and which are to be taken down on a daily basis. It is not always an easy task as there is “strong arguments for either removing or leaving up the content”. Many users land up disagreeing with these decisions.
Mark Zuckerberg, in the November 2018 plan, sought to “create a new way for people to appeal content decisions to an independent body, whose decisions would be transparent and binding”. It is then that the “the Facebook Oversight Board” came into existence while the “Governance Charter” for the same was published in September.
The above mentioned board deals with “difficult content decisions” and comes up with “policy opinions” which often clash with the “freedom of expression” as oppose to “safety, privacy”, dignity and other such values. As per the blog:
“In this sense, the Oversight Board represents a new opportunity to provide enhanced access to remedy for individual users while also informing actions by Facebook to mitigate potential future harms”.
BSR conducted a review of human rights and it revealed the working procedure of the Oversight Board. The review was carried out to bring to light the “governance and operations of the Oversight Board” and its consistency with “human rights-based approaches, principles, standards, and methodologies”.
BSR’s review methodology for the same was based on the “UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights”, in short UNGPs, besides combining various other “human rights principles, standards, and methodologies upon which the UNGPs are based”. One of the major challenges that Facebook Oversight Board face is the effort required to meet the wide spectrum of rightsholders coming from various regions of the globe, speaking various languages and strike a balance between them.
Now keeping this issue in mind, Facebook Oversight Board with its authority of making independent decision is “creating an institution unlike anything ever previously created by a company”. The BSR blog describes this attempt as a “leap into the unknown”, an “oversight mechanism” that to BSR’s knowledge no other company has established so far. Therefore it is important to keep up with human rights in a consistent manner.
The Oversight Board has “seven key human rights” topics which were reviewed by BSR. Here are they, as mentioned by BSR:
“Harms and Impacts: Addressing a wide variety of human rights issues and prioritizing the most severe cases “Vulnerable Groups: Addressing the rights and needs of individuals from groups or populations at heightened risk of becoming vulnerable or marginalized “Remedy: Providing pathways to effective remedy (i.e., efforts to restore the victim to the same or equivalent position before the harm) and adhering to the access to remedy and operational-level grievance mechanism expectations of the UNGPs “Decision-Making: Ensuring that Oversight Board members are fully aware of the international human rights standards and that Oversight Board decisions are effectively integrated into Facebook “Informed Consent: Ensuring that relevant users (e.g., those posting or featured in content) provide consent for each case and understand both their risks and their rights when consenting “Safety and Integrity: Addressing new human rights risks arising from the existence of the Oversight Board “Transparency: Accounting for how human rights impacts are addressed through external communications” Facebook, the giant social media platform, has to constantly decide on which posts or comments to be kept on the forum and which are to be taken down on a daily basis. It is not always an easy task as there is “strong arguments for either removing or leaving up the content”. Many users land up disagreeing with these decisions.
Mark Zuckerberg, in the November 2018 plan, sought to “create a new way for people to appeal content decisions to an independent body, whose decisions would be transparent and binding”. It is then that the “the Facebook Oversight Board” came into existence while the “Governance Charter” for the same was published in September.
The above mentioned board deals with “difficult content decisions” and comes up with “policy opinions” which often clash with the “freedom of expression” as oppose to “safety, privacy”, dignity and other such values. As per the blog:
“In this sense, the Oversight Board represents a new opportunity to provide enhanced access to remedy for individual users while also informing actions by Facebook to mitigate potential future harms”.
BSR conducted a review of human rights and it revealed the working procedure of the Oversight Board. The review was carried out to bring to light the “governance and operations of the Oversight Board” and its consistency with “human rights-based approaches, principles, standards, and methodologies”.
BSR’s review methodology for the same was based on the “UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights”, in short UNGPs, besides combining various other “human rights principles, standards, and methodologies upon which the UNGPs are based”. One of the major challenges that Facebook Oversight Board face is the effort required to meet the wide spectrum of rightsholders coming from various regions of the globe, speaking various languages and strike a balance between them.
Now keeping this issue in mind, Facebook Oversight Board with its authority of making independent decision is “creating an institution unlike anything ever previously created by a company”. The BSR blog describes this attempt as a “leap into the unknown”, an “oversight mechanism” that to BSR’s knowledge no other company has established so far. Therefore it is important to keep up with human rights in a consistent manner.
The Oversight Board has “seven key human rights” topics which were reviewed by BSR. Here are they, as mentioned by BSR:
The review report of BSR details recommendations for the board as well as Facebook in every topic. Additionally, it also mentions “three high-level insights”. Below are the said insights as mentioned by BSR:
The review was carried out at a time when Facebook built the Oversight Board. This way, the company was able to incorporate many of the recommendations made by BSR into the oversight and functioning of the board. As a result, the Board has become for “more consistent with human rights-based approaches, principles, standards, and methodologies”.
Here are some of the measures already implemented by Facebook, as mentioned by BSR:
References:
3blmedia.com