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6 insurrection, although it criticized the open-ended nature of the penalty, calling it an “indeterminate and standardless.” Facebook said it would “consider the board’s decision and determine an action that is clear and proportionate.” In its highest-profile case to date, the board in May upheld Facebook’s decision to indefinitely suspend former President Donald Trump in the wake of the Jan. It began hearing cases last year and has final authority to decide whether Facebook and Instagram should allow or remove content. The board is entirely independent from Facebook, and its members are not company employees.

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“It’s very unlikely to get consistent, predictable results out of that.”įacebook announced the creation of its Oversight Board in 2018, when CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a note published on the site wrote that “Facebook should not make so many important decisions about free expression and safety on its own.” The problem is that “courts are slow, cumbersome and expensive, and not a nimble form of regulation,” he said.

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“This is not impossible, and there are a lot of people who favor this, especially trial lawyers.” “Or maybe government regulation takes the form of liberating trial lawyers to sue,” he continued. Moreover, he pointed out, government interests “may not be entirely benign.” (He invited Republicans in the audience to consider how they’d like to have their social media posts vetted by the Biden administration, or Democrats to have theirs approved by the Trump administration.)

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“Beyond that, as soon as the government is telling the companies how to regulate (content), then that creates state action, such that the speakers on the platforms then have a constitutional claim.” “The companies themselves may have First Amendment rights vis a vis the government,” he said.

Trying to tackle online speech via government regulation runs into First Amendment issues, McConnell noted. Facebook, by the way which includes Instagram and WhatApp, said it is planning to rebrand itself with a new name, according to The Verge on Tuesday. Indeed, the board, which currently has 20 members (most but not all are lawyers) from around the world, strikes me as a promising approach to a difficult problem: How should social media companies - for that matter, society as a whole - deal with online misinformation, intimidation, harassment and hate speech?Ī Facebook spokesman declined comment. But McConnell praised the social media giant for its willingness to engage in what he called “an experiment” in policing content that may run afoul of its community standards by launching the independent Facebook Oversight Board last year.