Having the supreme court discuss the role of free speech is so 1980s, what we actually needed was Facebook's supreme court. Let's discuss!
But first let us understand how we got here.
As I explained in the last video, as soon as one posts something on any of these social media platforms. The post is subjected to the companies policies. If it does not meet these policies, the Algorithms or other users have the power to report such posts. Then,
In the case of Facebook, one of the 15000 souls spread across the globe called content moderators handle these reports, called tickets. I won't go into the details of the content moderators. However, I will leave some resources down below including the one called “The despair and darkness of people will get to you" by restofworld.org. The title of this article doesn't even come close to the darkness that awaits the content moderators.
Other resources: Bodies in Seats by Casey Newton and Three months in hell by Burcu Gültekin Punsman
Anyways, Despite the effort and money thrown into this problem, Facebook has been repeatedly accused of censorship OR inciting violence and riots by leaving stuff up.
All these things have led Facebook to revamp its approach in referring to and regulating the world's online speech.
The initial impact of these decisions has been felt in the last couple of weeks including the decision regarding the 45th president of the USA and ending the long withstanding policy regarding special treatment for elected officials.
And I will talk about these decisions in a minute. But let's first discuss the timeline and certain decisions that have led Facebook to look like an unelected government for online speech for most of the planet.
→ Timeline graphic:
In November of 2018, Zuckerberg publicly posts about an idea called "A Blueprint for Content Governance and Enforcement" where he discussed the problems like algorithm bias, click-bait, and misinformation, eventually laying down the idea for an independent oversight board.
"As I've thought about these content issues, I've increasingly come to believe that Facebook should not make so many important decisions about free expression and safety on our own."
Jan of 2019, the first official draft charter was published with 11 questions and suggested approaches to answer those questions - in total giving us more detail about the board's potential structure.