On Thursday, the Facebook Oversight Board stated that the company needs to be more transparent regarding how it has a potential double standard when dealing with certain high-profile accounts.
"Today we are releasing our first transparency reports which provide details on cases submitted to the Board, as well as our decisions and recommendations to Facebook. Our key finding: Facebook needs to commit to greater transparency and to treat users fairly," the board stated in a tweet:
"We also found Facebook was not fully forthcoming with the Board on X-check, failing to provide relevant and complete information on some occasions," continued the board:
"The Board announced today it has accepted Facebook's request to review the cross-check system and to recommend how to improve it. We will be welcoming public comments on this soon, and engaging closely with civil society and other experts as we scrutinize this crucial issue."
Today we are releasing our first transparency reports which provide details on cases submitted to the Board, as well as our decisions and recommendations to Facebook.
— Oversight Board (@OversightBoard) October 21, 2021
Our key finding: Facebook needs to commit to greater transparency and to treat users fairly.
The Oversight board had previously made the news for upholding the ban on ex-President Donald Trump, although there were dissenting members who also spoke out publicly against that measure.
At issue is a report that surfaced in Sept. 2021 indicated that Facebook exempted many of its users from internal checks that were standard for the rest of Facebook users, which was in turn mentioned in the board's Thursday transparency report.
The board feels that Facebook is hiding the specifics of how its "cross-check" system works. This cross-check system uses Facebook's algorithm to check if enforcement against users who have had posts taken down or been banned were enacted correctly.
Apparently, "out of 9842 public comments that were supressed by the social media giant a whopping 9666 of them were related to Trump," according to a tweet sent out by tech reporter Issie Lapowsky:
NEW: Facebook's Oversight Board released its transparency report.
— issie lapowsky (@issielapowsky) October 21, 2021
Two stats that really jumped out at me:
- Of the 9,842 public comments that came in, a whopping 9,666 of them were related to Trump.
- Nearly half of appeals came from the US and Canada https://t.co/SV8XsXkqVd
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