Facebook kept its own oversight board in the dark on program for VIP users

>Facebook told the oversight board that the program applied only "to a small number of decisions," which the company subsequently acknowledged was misleading

Indeed. Millions of users is a tiny fraction of Facebook's total user count, so in terms of absolute numbers it is probably a relatively small number of content.

But in terms of reach and influence, I would expect the VIP users to have by far a disproportionately large share. I would also expect them to be the most likely to post content that would end up in front of an oversight board. But of course, they are also the ones most able to raise a stink if Facebook moderates their content...

If having human moderation costs too much to scale to everything, do you throw up our arms and say humans will moderate nothing and it's entirely up to bots? Or do you still put some limited resources into human moderation that could check 0.1% of content, then have some algorithm that picks what content the human moderation gets applied to?

If you go that route, you might be very tempted to try to design the algorithm for picking which 0.1% of content goes to the humans to try to pick "important" content. Because you want to apply your limited human moderation resources to content that's "important" to get right or will be "impactful" for large numbers of people or the trajectory of an entire society.

I understand why this angers people. Facebook might see it in terms of deploying limited moderation resources in the most effective way. But suppose you're an "ordinary" person who gets posts deleted, accounts locked, etc. by bots for no discernable reason with no appeal. As an "ordinary" person, learning "important" people have a different, more forgiving justice system where actual humans make decisions is going to make you pretty angry.

I'm not sure it's malicious intent on Facebook's part.

Interesting number. Wonder if that gives us a rough idea of the global ratio of celebrities to normal people?

8 billion people on the planet vs. 5.8 million celebs means there are on average ~ 1500 normal people for every celebrity?

Seems kinda low... or that there are way too many users Facebook regards as "high profile".

The ratio gets even more suspect when you remember Facebook "only" has 3 billion monthly users (src https://backlinko.com/facebook-users) ... 517 normal people for every celeb

It's just more of Facebook's desperate attempt to stay relevant and appease the most toxic "influencers" to keep their revenue going up and justify their absurd market valuation.

Useful oversight has to come from external sources, particular by those most affected by your actions. Doesn't have to be entirely cut throat but god how often do schools let kids grade their own homework?

Big companies only make things like these so they can avoid external oversight. Then the Senators they buy off can say "Oh we'll step in when needed but it looks like they're trying."

Now this dude gets an easier time harassing people, breaking Facebook's rules and being a jackass on their website, just because of his damn dog. This is creepy.

However, I'm most amazed and impressed how facebook has created a team -- likely compensated in FB equity -- and then convinced the world that the team is an "oversight board".

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Their board knew, and approved.