Meta‘s Supervisory Board is under renewed pressure over recent changes to the company’s fact-checking and moderation policies, which were made without the input of an advisory group. A coalition of civil society organizations has published an open letter to the Supervisory Board, stating that the group should resign en masse, as “recent events make it clear that the company has abandoned any claim to oversight and is acting regardless of the consequences.”
The letter, first reported by The Washington Post, came from the Global Coalition for Tech Justice, which is made up of more than 250 human rights and digital rights advocates, fact-checking organizations, and other civil society groups from around the world.
“A mass resignation would be a historic act of conscience that would clearly show that Meta’s reckless disregard for human rights cannot be justified, ignored, or hidden behind the curtain of a supervisory board with no real authority,” the letter reads. “By collectively resigning, you will demonstrate solidarity with all communities affected by Meta’s bad faith, increase public pressure on Meta, and demonstrate that true accountability cannot exist in a system designed to suppress it.”
Last month, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta would end its longstanding fact-checking programs and roll back content moderation standards that had protected immigrants and LGBT people on its platform. Meta’s CEO, who stated when creating the supervisory board that “Facebook should not be making so many important decisions about freedom of expression and safety on its own,” reportedly decided to make the changes after a visit from President-elect Donald Trump last year and consulted only a “handful” of people at Meta.
The co-chair of the Steering Committee later stated that the changes came as a “surprise” to the group, which was created to help shape platform-wide policy, but in this case was not consulted in advance.
The Global Coalition for Technical Justice is not the first group to question the role of the Supervisory Board in connection with Zuckerberg’s radical policy changes. Members of the US Congress also recently raised this issue in a letter addressed to the Meta CEO. “The board, once touted as a beacon of accountability, is rendered toothless when Meta itself refuses to adhere to the principles of ‘trust and safety,'” they wrote.
One member of the Global Coalition for Technical Justice was even more blunt. “If the Oversight Board plays no role (not even an advisory role) in the biggest change to content moderation since its inception, it’s clear that the experiment has failed,” the Real Facebook Oversight Board, a group of longtime Oversight Board critics, said last month.
Meanwhile, the Oversight Board’s reaction to Meta’s changes has been muted so far. Shortly after Zuckerberg’s announcement, the group released a statement saying it would “work with Meta” on a plan to implement community notes. Later, it added a brief update that said it was “reviewing the implications of various changes” that went “beyond fact-checking.”
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In their statement, the co-chairs of the Supervisory Board noted that “the Board is carefully evaluating Meta’s policy changes and examining their impact” on current cases. “As always, we will conduct a thorough and balanced evaluation of these policies, make binding decisions, and offer nuanced policy recommendations to which Meta should respond, providing transparency to users and civil society on how these changes affect them.” “
