Commentary: We are the new board at Facebook. Here's what we'll decide.
Over the past 18 months, more than 2,000 experts and other relevant parties from 88 countries have contributed feedback that has shaped the development of this oversight board, which will have 20 members (ultimately growing to 40) and is scheduled to become operational this year. The oversight board will focus on the most challenging content issues for Facebook, including in areas such as hate speech, harassment, and protecting people’s safety and privacy. It will make final and binding decisions on whether specific content should be allowed or removed from Facebook and Instagram.
... The board members come from different professional, cultural and religious backgrounds and have various political viewpoints. Some of us have been publicly critical of Facebook; some of us haven’t... We are all independent of Facebook. And we are all committed to freedom of expression within the framework of international norms of human rights... The oversight board’s operations are funded by a $130 million trust fund that is completely independent of Facebook and cannot be revoked. Board members will serve fixed terms of three years, up to a maximum of three terms... Over the coming months, we will lay out how we prioritize and select cases for review. Once a case has been chosen, it will be considered by a panel with a rotating set of members. All panel decisions will be reviewed by the entire board before they are finalized, and if a majority of members disagree with a decision, they can ask a new panel to hear the case again.