Real Facebook Oversight Requires More Than a 40-Expert Board

Real Facebook Oversight Requires More Than a 40-Expert Board

5 years ago
Anonymous $Dftgs0JzgE

https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-oversight-board-draft-charter/

When Facebook announced in November that it would launch an independent oversight board, questions arose about what that might look like and how it would work. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for one, compared the would-be governing body to the Supreme Court, in its potential capacity to review the biggest issues of the day and set a sort of Facebook case law. On Monday, Facebook released a draft charter answering questions about how such an institution might function. Much of it is still undecided, but one thing is clear: To compare Facebook's board to the Supreme Court is to minimize the sheer complexity of what Facebook is setting out to accomplish.

With the US Supreme Court, the founding fathers created an über-powerful judicial body to enforce a constitution that now governs 325 million residents of the United States. That's 325 million people whose beliefs and values may vary, but who are all subject to the same set of laws, who largely speak the same language, and who share at least some cultural norms or heritage. Up to 8,000 cases are filed with the Supreme Court each term. The court takes up just about 80 of them.