this debate over how the facebook oversight board preps the landscape of coverage made me want to suggest some baseline context as folks evaluate/report on the OB. https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1355913955852636163

1. the OB is not 'public oversight'. FB created an innovative/expensive mechanism to evaluate specific content questions. it is practically resistant to imitation because of the cost - google could manage it, maybe twitter. any other platform? doubt it.

1bis. to this extent, it may be a problem if it sucks all the air out of genuine public oversight or we come to expect each company to adopt this level of investment. that'd lock in the competitive dominance of the big and mighty, a drag on innovation & start-up culture.

2. the OB may be a mechanism of private oversight to help prevent human rights harms. if it works, why object to a company finding a way to help it make better decisions that align with the public interest?

2bis. to this extent, we can evaluate the decisions on human rights grounds. are they getting it right? are they helping protect against some categories of harms? this isn't to over-legalize all this but simply to ask, are they addressing platform content issues appropriately?

2ter. but note, because it's private oversight, reliant on fb rules, the decisions have no impact on what anyone else is doing. some decisions will only make sense for FB. for instance, an account could be a trigger for incitement on FB that wouldn't be everywhere. so...

3. as noted by many, the OB does not begin to address the vast issues raised by super-dominant companies with such power to influence public debate. if we let the oversight board distract us from the broader public policy issues, that's as much on us as them.

4. on that distraction...the moment could be used to promote good public policy -- transparency mandates, cross-industry multi-stakeholder oversight, oversight of global impact.

to sum up, i wouldn't treat the OB as if it's public policy. it's a private answer to a public problem. that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. it's innovative, it's serious, & i want to see it succeed as a mechanism to prevent one set of harms the platform causes.

[nb: i received an email with the decisions about 3.5 hours before they were public but did not read them. no idea who else/how many did. we at UCI Law are working on an OB-oversight project, which includes interviews with lots of ppl incl OB]