The board is full of law professors, human rights activists, and even one former PM, and their funding is irrevocable. I would give them time to see if their reputations generalize.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversight_Board_(Facebook)#Mem...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversight_Board_(Facebook)#Mem...
>In theory, the Supreme Leader is elected by the Assembly of Experts. However, all candidates for membership at the Assembly of Experts (including the President and the Majlis (parliament)) must have their candidacy approved by the Guardian Council, whose members in turn, are half appointed unilaterally by the Supreme Leader and half subject to confirmation by the Majlis after being appointed by the head of the Iranian judiciary, who is himself appointed by the Supreme Leader. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Leader_of_Iran
I've seen news outlets describe the Oversight Board as a "Supreme Court" of sorts. With the US Federal Judiciary, there's a mechanism by which judges are appointed by democratically elected bodies (setting aside the debate around how different elected bodies are composed). As a result, we have some modicum of ideological diversity in the Courts; you have originalists, "living Constitutionalists", and everything in between. The balance experiences shifts every few decades, but by and large it's remained a balanced body.
If the Oversight Board really is a "Supreme Court", how can we trust that its composition will be made up of the right balance of perspectives? If the board members elect new board members, what happens if the board members become increasingly homogenous and create an endless negative feedback loop of self-selection[1]?
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain...
In contrast, the Oversight Board appears to function like a hypothetical Supreme Court in which the sitting members appoint new members. Imagine, if the 2021 US Supreme Court did that, do you think that its ideological balance would ever shift? Imagine if the 1999 US Supreme Court (majority of the opposite ideology to today's) appointed new members. Do you think its ideological balance would look like the one it has today?
If anything is "pure fantasy", it's the idea that the members of the Supreme Court are partisan ideologues as opposed to jurists that have truly fundamentally different ideas of how the judiciary ought to function, in good faith. It's exactly that kind of diversity of opinions that has resulted in the Supreme Court enjoying the highest approval rating of any institution in the Federal government: https://news.gallup.com/poll/316817/approval-supreme-court-h...
Get a handle on the knee-jerk skepticism and cynicism and look into it yourself and make a principled argument for whether it's satisfactory or not. Just spitting out your first reaction isn't helpful.
This particular politician was the prime minister of Denmark until 2015, and in 2015, Denmark was ranked third out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders' World Press Freedom Index. Another politician is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who ordered the assassination of reporter Jamal Khashoggi.
I do think Helle Thorning-Schmidt lends them some credibility, and not because she's "a politician."
I’m sure they all mean well. But I’m going to assume the board is for show until they do determine something Zuckerberg doesn’t like, and it gets upheld.
https://twitter.com/jamalgreene/status/1055797078868324353
first person on that list seem to think trump is actually insane
https://twitter.com/cboteromarino/status/896156640986054656
Yeah this ppl thought really hard and objectively about his decision to uphold the ban /s
I assume rest of the people on that committee are ideologically biased.
Silly dog and pony show by facebook.
but you haven't actually checked have you? There is _actually_ a reasonable diversity of thought on that panel.
For there to be a range of thought, there needs to exist people who's world outlook is different and or abhorrent to yours. thats how we represent diversity of thought.
Sounds like you have. Curious, Do you have an example?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A1s_Saj%C3%B3 is a human rights judge.
there is of course the ex editor of the guardian as well, who wouldn't be my first choice to have on board.
In what way do you mean this? The classically conservative/libertarian/1a absolutist "people should be able to say whatever they want and the government cannot meddle", or the current republican "the government should regulate companies do to prevent them from criticizing the president" free speech absolutism?
There's a common trope thrown around that "the first amendment only applies to the government"...which is obviously true and nobody credible actually believes otherwise. The debate at hand is about the principle of free speech. That is to say, the so called "current republican" argues that the same ideals that justify guaranteeing the freedom to express oneself in public, free from government persecution, ought to be applied with private companies that host the "public square". The First Amendment isn't relevant here, because obviously there's no law that prohibits a private company from censoring. The issue at hand is an ought question; i.e. should a purportedly open platform provided by a private company censor political speech? In theory, the same arguments one would make in defense of maintaining the First Amendment (in its current form) in our Constitution also applies in defense of advocating that a private company hosting a "public square" platform ought not to censor political speech.
So circling back to the original question: we now have this Oversight Board which ostensibly has a diverse array of "experts" who we expect to weigh in on complex cases (a "Supreme Court" of sorts). The question is, how diverse is this board? Does it include anyone that might advocate what I laid out above? A couple other commenters provided examples (thanks!), but it's an important question that bears repeating. I'm also not sure how the system ensures that the pool of experts remains sufficiently diverse over time as members retire.
To use a legal metaphor, fb policies are a constitution and the board is a supreme court. Facebook can amend it's constitution however it likes, and so there is no such thing as am unconstitutional law.
Sure, and in theory the Supreme Court's function isn't to set new laws, it's to ensure that the government is enforcing them consistently and accurately. In practice, however, it's become the epicenter of a debate around whether it should actually be responsible for setting new standards and laws via interpretation, especially when the Legislature doesn't do what some people might want.
That's the issue at hand: what's to prevent the Oversight Board from making ideologically influenced rulings which contend that more heavy-handed suspensions are actually consistent enforcements of the existing policy, thereby adding new de jure restrictions on speech via precedent? That's the fundamental question.
So while you're correct that Facebook's moderation policies aren't by default "absolutist", you still want sufficient representation of gadflies on the Oversight Board to ensure that more restrictions aren't added via precedent. Perhaps that gadfly is an "absolutist", or perhaps they're something else. My question is: how do we make sure that contingent continues to exist as new members are appointed? There exists a complex system of checks and balances that go into appointing SCOTUS justices, which is how we've gotten to the point that the SCOTUS continues to be seen as a referee rather than a rule-making body (and as a result, enjoys its high approval rating). What's the equivalent analog for the Oversight Board?
Yes, and this is the mistake you're making in reasoning: we do this because it is exceedingly difficult to modify the US constitution. Facebook has no such limitation. If the oversight board, for example, tried to interpret the existing policies in a speech absolutist way to force Facebook's hand, Facebook could simply change the text of the policies, equivalent to a constitutional amendment.
The value of judicial activism is far lower when the constitution is effortlessly fungible. When facebook modifies its policies, that is equivalent to an amendment to the constitution. If a gadfly tries to interpret that change in a way that Facebook dislikes, they can just clarify the constitution the next day.
You can see how this impacts the Board's rulings, they're almost always formed as requirements that Facebook clarify its policies further.
> Perhaps that gadfly is an "absolutist", or perhaps they're something else. My question is: how do we make sure that contingent continues to exist as new members are appointed?
But this has nothing to do with whether someone believes that Facebook should be able to moderate people's speech. An unflinching free speech absolutist who believes that no entity should be capable of moderating speech would be wholly incompatible with the oversight board, as they'd need to concede things about moderation to even accept the oversight board's validity as an arbiter of moderation decisions.
Also I do want to take a moment to mention that
> There's a common trope thrown around that "the first amendment only applies to the government"...which is obviously true and nobody credible actually believes otherwise.
Is easily found to be untrue, there are a number of sitting senators and house members, as well as tons of state representatives who are pushing for (trivially) unconstitutional laws that regulate tech companies in violation of the first amendment. The most recent example I saw was the Florida law that exempts companies that operate amusement parks.
If that's the case, then the Oversight Board doesn't actually serve the purpose that the Supreme Court does, and your analogy there is inaccurate. In fact, if Facebook can simply unilaterally "change its constitution" when the Board issues an undesirable ruling, then it is much closer to the GGP's characterization of "One department of the megacorp confirms a decision made by the other department". In fact, if one might attempt to find an accurate analog in real world governance, another commenter pointed out that it's more akin to Iran: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27050948
"In theory, the Supreme Leader is elected by the Assembly of Experts. However, all candidates for membership at the Assembly of Experts (including the President and the Majlis (parliament)) must have their candidacy approved by the Guardian Council, whose members in turn, are half appointed unilaterally by the Supreme Leader and half subject to confirmation by the Majlis after being appointed by the head of the Iranian judiciary, who is himself appointed by the Supreme Leader."
> An unflinching free speech absolutist who believes that no entity should be capable of moderating speech would be wholly incompatible with the oversight board, as they'd need to concede things about moderation to even accept the oversight board's validity as an arbiter of moderation decisions.
I respectfully disagree. As long as the unflinching absolutist doesn't have the final say as a single individual, the unflinching absolutist serves the purpose of pulling the board in the direction of permissiveness (i.e. the principle of free speech). This is not all that different from the purpose that activists serve in society writ large, as you pointed out when you mentioned judicial activism.
Yes and no. Ensuring that Facebook is transparent with their policies is valuable. The OB prevents Facebook from lying to users about what its policies are in practice, so there is oversight that ensures that the de facto and de jure policies don't veer apart. That's still very much what the supreme court does, and very much not what the Iranian Assembly of Experts does.
It is the case that the OB is relatively less powerful than the Supreme court because the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch of Facebook are one and the same, and so relatively far more powerful. But it still provides a semblance of an independent judiciary.
A lot of its power comes in keeping facebook honest and accountable to users. A facebook that cannot lie about its policies is easier to hold accountable.
> As long as the unflinching absolutist doesn't have the final say as a single individual
I think this is akin to saying that a Supreme Court justice who believes that the law should be that the first amendment should apply to Facebook would be an asset to the court. That's true only if that's the outcome you prefer. Its terrible for the legitimacy of the court if someone's values are antithetical to the policies they're purportedly interpreting.
I think where we are in disagreement is whether this remotely can be considered an independent judiciary (Iran is below average: http://reports.weforum.org/pdf/gci-2017-2018-scorecard/WEF_G...).
As long as the OB functions in the way that you just described, it is not that. It is quite literally "One department of the megacorp confirms a decision made by the other department", and the fact that it's comprised of academics and experts (per the GP commenter) is just lipstick on a pig.
I think if you've concluded that from my prior comment, you're not reading what I've said with any open mind. Because I explicitly stated the opposite.
I think its also very clear that in practice "one part of the megacorp confirms the others" isn't how the OB has operated so far. There are cases where the OB has suggested FB adopt more aggressive polices, and cases where it has suggested it adopt more lax ones, and cases where it has told facebook that it wasn't acting in accordance with its policies. For example this one where, to continue the judicial metaphor, the OB remanded the case back to a lower court, noting that a "permanent suspension" was unconstitutional. Facebook can now have the lower court issue a different ruling (and then perhaps have that ruling appealed to the SC), or it could open itself to criticism by changing its policies to allowing a "permanent suspension", whatever that means.
You more or less admitted it in the following statement: "It is the case that the OB is relatively less powerful than the Supreme court because the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch of Facebook are one and the same, and so relatively far more powerful". That's essentially how Iran works today, and its judiciary is the opposite of independent.
Nobody ever sets out to create a dysfunctional judiciary, it's just extraordinarily easy to create a system that trends toward rot in the long run. Likewise, in most countries where independence of the judiciary is a foreign concept, it's not because they didn't attempt to set up an independent judiciary, it's because the structure doesn't ensure an independent judiciary in the long run. At the end of the day, that's what a "Constitution" is. It means "structure".
> I think its also very clear that in practice "one part of the megacorp confirms the others" isn't how the OB has operated so far.
Correct, and I'm making no comments here about how the OB has operated so far, I'm trying to understand the structure of the system to try and predict how it might operate in the future. Throughout my line of commenting here, you'll notice that I'm asking about the checks and balances underlying the OB and how its members are appointed. I think the composition of the board, as it exists today, appears (mostly) reasonable. However, the mechanism by which new members are appointed (at least as I understand it) leaves much to be desired. When such a body is comprised almost entirely of people that ideologically align with the corporation it aims to check it becomes a sign of how the OB might operate in the future, and from what I can tell, there's no check preventing this from happening in this system that FB has created. In the long run, as judicial systems go, the OB appears to lean much more toward the Iran side of the spectrum rather than the US side of the spectrum.
But I didn't admit this. The OB is an independent court that Facebook has the power to (effectively) ignore. That's not the same as the Judiciary being not independent.