![]() Just because algorithmic amplification is more important than content moderation doesn’t mean content moderation doesn’t matter. Unfair because the Oversight Board was designed to address a different issue, namely the enforcement of Facebook’s content policies. Reasonable because, yes, the engagement-driven algorithms powering Facebook-and other social media platforms, for that matter-are the most powerful forces affecting how content spreads online. This strikes me as a reasonable observation that is ultimately unfair. As the Knight First Amendment Institute put it in comments submitted to the Oversight Board, “Trump’s statements on and off social media in the days leading up to January 6 were certainly inflammatory and dangerous, but part of what made them so dangerous is that, for months before that day, many Americans had been exposed to staggering amounts of sensational misinformation about the election on Facebook’s platform, shunted into echo chambers by Facebook’s algorithms, and insulated from counter-speech by Facebook’s architecture.” Critics of the Oversight Board will point to that fact as proof that the board is powerless to tackle the most important issue, namely the extent to which Facebook’s design amplifies the spread of false and dangerous material. ![]() The aspect of Facebook’s response that seems set to draw the most criticism (aside from Republican outrage that Trump remains suspended) is its decision to not follow the recommendation to review its own role in contributing to the violence of January 6 and publish its findings. For instance, in response to a suggestion that it rely on regional linguistic and political expertise in enforcing policies around the world, the company declares, “We ensure that content reviewers are supported by teams with regional and linguistic expertise, including the context in which the speech is presented.” And yet a Reuters investigation published this week found that posts promoting gay conversion therapy, which Facebook’s rules prohibit, continue to run rampant in Arab countries, “where practitioners post to millions of followers through verified accounts.” As the content moderation scholar Evelyn Douek puts it, with many of its statements “Facebook gives itself a gold star, but they're really borderline passes at best.” In several cases, Facebook claims that it’s already following the Oversight Board’s recommendations. Indeed, as with any announcement from Facebook, this one will be impossible to evaluate fully until we see how the company follows through in practice. It would apply more broadly than to just Trump’s account, and it would show whether the company is willing to follow the Oversight Board’s advice even when it doesn’t have to. ![]() As I wrote at the time, Facebook’s response to the nonbinding part would probably prove more important. When the board first published its ruling last month, it issued both a binding command-Facebook must articulate a specific action on Donald Trump’s account and could not continue an indefinite suspension-and nonbinding recommendations, most notably that the platform abandon its policy of treating statements by politicians as inherently “newsworthy” and thus exempt from the rules that apply to everyone else. The Oversight Board is performing a valuable, though very limited, function, and the Trump situation illustrates why. I confess to finding myself in a different camp. Republicans are, of course, outraged that Trump hasn’t been reinstated. Opinions on the announcement range from calling it a pointless bit of “ accountability theater” to suggesting that it’s cowardly and irresponsible. ![]() The response also includes a number of other policy changes. We learned that Trump’s account is now frozen for precisely two years from his original January 7 suspension date, at which point Facebook will reassess the risks of letting him back on. On Friday, the company issued its response to the Facebook Oversight Board’s recommendations on the indefinite ban of Donald Trump. Judging from the press releases filling my inbox and the tweets lighting up my timeline, no one is happy with Facebook right now.
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