I have been off work for a few days and have missed the discourse about Facebook’s oversight board. But I have read the @Klonick New Yorker piece, and listened to the accompanying Radiolab/NYRH bit.
It led to a few thoughts. I have no idea if other people have said them already!

First, we absolutely should stop calling the Oversight Board Facebook’s “Supreme Court”. I get it, the analogy is powerful and useful in lots of ways. But it has the most value for Facebook itself, disguising what is essentially a group of advisers as a quasi-legal entity.

Facebook has, for a very long time, hinted that is like—or even more powerful than—an actual nation, without ever wanting the responsibility or accountability of a govt. So we shouldn’t use the language of democracy; Zuckerberg is not a founding father, he’s a CEO and controller.

(That’s a more general point about coverage I suppose)

Second, there seems almost zero discussion of whether FB should be administering this kind of self-regulation, why it might be doing so, or how the OB intersects with actual courts, real laws, and existing regulators.

Most countries have laws about speech, violence... how does the OB work against those frameworks? Many countries want to hold FB to account over business practices... how does the OB satisfy or help placate those concerns?

Third, there’s almost no discussion of how Facebook’s product choices and decisions are the biggest factor in the spread of misinformation and clashes over free speech. One paragraph in the NYer story, that I recall.

Ruling on moderation post by post is like stopping a tsunami by removing one drop of water from the ocean at a time.

Facebook’s entire business is built on increasing engagement and amplification of content; it is the tremor that makes the waves, it is the quake.

In tech companies product IS policy. The way things are designed, and the incentives underneath the products, are central to any meaningful regulation, either internal or external.

Q groups didn’t explode because Q is wildly popular; Facebook recommended those groups to users because it thought it would get them using Facebook’s products more. An Oversight Board which cannot interrogate the product is merely dealing with the symptoms. It is palliative care.

From what I’ve seen, Facebook’s business model, vast profits, or rapacious appetite for expansion don’t really get a mention in most coverage atm—despite being absolutely central to the problem. Zuckerberg’s incredible control is just assumed to be normal (it is not normal.)

Anyway. More reporting on the Oversight Board is important, these pieces were interesting, and I think we can all do more to keep going on this. I would love to see these questions get worked through with this level of access and insight.