By Dipayan Ghosh
Following Mark Zuckerberg’s stated commitment to improving his company’s public accountability measures nearly a year ago, Facebook announced detailed plans last month for its new Oversight Board. The body, which the company says will comprise 40 independent experts who will serve in three-year terms, has been described by many as Facebook’s own Supreme Court. The board is designed to have notable independence; in these judgments it can overrule Zuckerberg himself. But is it really set up to succeed?
I would contend not. It is not poor execution that is responsible for the company’s general troubles in content moderation; it is the business model behind the company’s platforms itself.
This same model lies at the center of the consumer Internet as a whole, and is based on maximizing consumer engagement and injecting ads throughout our digital experience. It relies on collecting personal data and on sophisticated algorithms that curate social feeds and target those ads. Because there is no earnest consideration of what consumers wish to or should see in this equation, they are subjected to whatever content the platform believes will maximize profits. These practices, in turn, generate negative externalities of which disinformation is only one.
Take this example: When Russian political operatives sought to subvert our elections, they turned to the Internet platforms. These efforts relied on the very same audience segmentation and targeting techniques that allow the platform to increase traffic (and ad revenue).
For an Oversight Board to address these issues, it would need jurisdiction not only over personal posts but also political ads. Beyond that, it would need to be able not only to take down specific pieces of content but also to halt the flow of American consumer data to Russian operatives and change the ways that algorithms privilege contentious content. These steps are much more of a challenge to a company that relies on these mechanisms for its bread and butter. No matter where we set the boundaries, Facebook will always want to push them.
In reality, then, the Oversight Board in its current form cannot address the harms that are perpetrated and perpetuated over Facebook.
Perhaps, the Oversight Board’s authority should be expanded from taking down content to the more critical concerns at the heart of the company itself. We need oversight of the company’s data practices to promote consumer and citizen privacy; oversight of its strategic acquisitions and data governance to protect against anticompetitive practices; and oversight of its algorithmic decision-making to protect against bias. There are many ways that such oversight could be operationalized: through shareholder power, governmental oversight, third-party auditing, industrial regulation or, indeed, extensions of the board’s authority.
Dipayan Ghosh is a codirector of the Platform Accountability Project at the Harvard Kennedy School.