Facebook's new 'Supreme Court' knocks content rules as vague and incomplete in first rulings
Washington Post
By Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg
Jan. 28, 2021 at 10:26 a.m. EST
Facebook’s new Oversight Board found company content moderation policies vague and poorly communicated in its first set of decisions released Thursday, overruling the company’s actions in four of the five cases it decided in its initial round of cases.
The actions covered a range of issues that have vexed social media companies — alleged hate speech, coronavirus misinformation and references to dangerous organizations and people — and included one case in which an automated detection system apparently overreacted to an image of an uncovered female nipple in a breast-cancer awareness campaign.
Taken together, the rulings suggest the oversight board is going to demand greater clarity and transparency from Facebook in the tiny sliver of cases it chooses to review. The board is also weighing Facebook’s ban of President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, though a decision in that case is not likely for months. The five cases decided Thursday all date to October or November of last year.
“We often found that the community standards as written are incomplete,” said board member Sudhir Krishnaswamy, vice-chancellor of the National Law School of India University, in an interview with The Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/28/facebook-oversight-board-cases/
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