Facebook announces first 20 members of Oversight Board | Hacker News Reader

Facebook announces first 20 members of Oversight Board

oversightboard.com

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Interesting that one of them is from Taiwan. I wonder how that would influence facebook/china relations and any attempts by facebook to make china friendly versions of the platform to gain more access to that market. Seems like they've made a big political statement just by having a Taiwanese person on the oversight board and using the word Taiwan instead of Chinese Taipei

At this point, China is gone for Facebook, for the same reasons Facebook dominates the rest of the world. WeChat has strong network effects, everyone is already on it, and Tencent has deep enough pockets that they don't have to worry about anything Facebook might do. WeChat is also much more integrated into daily life in Chaina than all of Facebook apps combined. So I am sure they have given up on China practically.

> Seems like they've made a big political statement just by having a Taiwanese person on the oversight board

Are they? Or are you making to political statement, with this comment?

Not an attack, something to consider.

I'm making a political statement by using the word Taiwan, as is facebook. Just using that word instead of the word chinese Taipei says a lot

I will be extremely curious to see if this turns out to be a model that works well, and if Google/YouTube and Twitter winds up doing the same thing, or (maybe even better?) Facebook+Google+Twitter cooperate to share a single board.

It seems like it would be a smart move -- as long as the board comes up with respectable policies, it could effectively immediately insulate the companies from a lot of criticism.

On the other hand, allowing/removing content is only one part of the equation. Prioritizing which content to show (and to which users) is arguably a far bigger issue (with serious democratic implications) that this board doesn't appear to touch. But it's such a can of worms, I also don't see how they could.

I can see how a unified board would take a lot of pressure from their companies but society-wise it would probably be better if such boards were separate, both for comparability and power spreading reasons.

Is this "the free market regulating itself" I hear so much about?

How many of them are conservative and how many of them come from cultures with long traditions of free speech?

Most of them, like most people in general, don't primarily identify as some loaded political identity. Out of the US members, three would likely satisfy the criteria you're thinking of: Jamal Greene is associated with the Federalist Society, Michael McConnell was appointed to a judgeship by Bush, and John Samples is a member of the Cato Institute.

The member from Pakistan has been running pakistan premier Digital Rights advocacy group:

https://twitter.com/nighatdad

anyone else having trouble opening the webpage in frefox? opens fine on chrome, but elements don't load in firefox.

Oversight, n.

... c) an inadvertent omission or error

Sounds about right.

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