Meta’s Oversight Board promises to make faster Facebook and Instagram moderation decisions

The board exists to grapple with particularly troublesome content-moderation decisions on Facebook and Instagram. It’s been hearing appeals against initial moderation decisions for a couple of years now, but during that time it’s only made 186 recommendations to Meta, and the company has only agreed to reverse its original decision in 80 of those cases—the most famous example was probably Meta’s conversion of its indefinite suspension of former President Donald Trump into a two-year ban that ended last month. What’s more, the Oversight Board’s activities have been somewhat opaque, as the panel published just 35 of its case decisions.

To put these numbers into context, the board said in its latest quarterly transparency report—also published today—that Facebook and Instagram users had submitted a whopping 193,137 cases to it in the last quarter of 2022 alone.

This morning, the board said it was amending its rules to allow expedited decisions that will mostly follow referrals from Meta itself, and could be produced within just two days in some cases—the outside limit is 30 days. That’s only a third of the time limit granted to standard decisions, but then again these fast-tracked cases won’t allow input from the public. They will still be binding on the company. 

The Oversight Board will also start publishing “summary decisions” on cases—referred by the public—in which Meta decided to reverse its initial content-moderation call. “These decisions will include information about Meta’s original error, which may be useful to researchers and civil society groups,” the board said. The board also announced the addition of Kenji Yoshino, a New York University legal expert, to its ranks.

It’s unlikely that today’s changes will dispel all the criticisms of the Oversight Board setup—it still can’t make policy recommendations that are binding on Meta, for one thing—but it should go some way toward addressing one of the big gripes: that its impact is severely limited by its tiny caseload.

“While the in-depth review of our standard decisions and policy advisory opinions will remain a key part of our work, we are also exploring new ways to increase our impact and improve how Meta treats people and communities around the world,” the board said in its statement today. “Increasing the number of decisions we produce, and the speed at which we do so, will let us tackle more of the big challenges of content moderation, and respond more quickly in situations with urgent real-world consequences.”

What remains to be seen is how much this shift moves the needle—unless the Oversight Board suddenly finds itself with a vast increase in resources, it still seems unlikely that regular Facebook or Instagram users will find it appreciably easier to successfully appeal against their content being taken down.

Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Data Sheet? Drop me a line here.

David Meyer

Data Sheet’s daily news section was written and curated by Andrea Guzman. 

NEWSWORTHY

Parent company blues. Workplace communication app Slack, which Salesforce acquired for $28 billion in 2020, is leaving its stunning downtown San Francisco office at the end of the month, as part of Salesforce’s cost-cutting efforts. Slack employees will be relocated to the nearby Salesforce Tower. And at LinkedIn, the social media platform that Microsoft picked up for $26 billion in 2016, there’s bad news, too: Recruiting department staffers were laid off Monday, The Information reported.  

Ford’s new battery plant. Ford has shared plans for a new facility that could produce enough batteries for 400,000 EVs a year when it opens in 2026 near Marshall, Mich. But the company will need help from the world’s largest battery maker: China’s CATL will provide the technology for lithium iron phosphate batteries. Given the current tensions between the U.S. and China, it’s not surprising that news of the partnership has drawn criticism from some politicians.

A new target for data brokers. A shift toward telehealth and therapy apps in recent years has created a market for Americans’ mental health data. A new report by Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy explores the processes data brokers have used to sell and exchange this data for a mixture of prices. One broker charged $275 for 5,000 aggregated counts of mental health records and other firms charged more than $75,000 or $100,000 a year for access to data that had information on people’s mental health conditions. The author calls for some action on this, whether it’s a comprehensive federal privacy law or an expansion of HIPAA’s privacy protections and bans on selling this data on the open market. 

Amazon is taking a larger cut. Just five years ago, Amazon was pocketing 40% of sellers’ revenue. But now, third-party merchants can expect to have Amazon take more than 50% of their revenue, according to a report by Marketplace Pulse. That’s because sellers have to pay a 15% transaction fee along with fees for storage, advertising, and promotions. Sellers shared their profits and losses with Marketplace Pulse, and a few reported that 60% or 70% of their revenue goes toward Amazon fees. 

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Why have one job when you could have two? A January poll from job site Monster found 37% of respondents have more than one full-time job. Most of the people who responded to the survey said they had to add another job since their main one didn’t pay enough to cover the bills.

From the article: 

Additionally, almost half said they’re worried their current job will lay them off, and they’re seeking another as a backup plan. That’s probably a reaction to the current state of the economy, which has been gripped by inflation, a looming recession, and layoff fears, despite the fact that layoff rates are currently below pre-pandemic norms.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

The minimalist designer famous for creating Apple’s iPhone has drawn King Charles’s coronation emblem, by Chris Morris

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says his 2-hour all-hands meeting about layoffs was a bad idea: ‘We were trying to explain the unexplainable,’ by Prarthana Prakash

Microsoft is trying to use ChatGPT to cut Google out of way more than just the search engine market, ARK Invest says, by Christiaan Hetzner

Xfinity customers have been getting Peacock free for three years, but that’s about to end, by Chris Morris

Stablecoins are under threat and this new type of crypto could replace them, says JPMorgan, by Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez

Elon Musk insists he’s restricting Ukraine’s access to Starlink because Zelensky could start World War III, by Christiaan Hetzner

BEFORE YOU GO

Happy Valentine’s Day. The Pew Research Center released some key findings about online dating this month. The report shows that if you’re on dating apps, you probably have mixed feelings about it—but more say their experiences have been very or somewhat positive than say they have been very or somewhat negative. People also gravitate to online dating for different reasons, with 44% saying they want a long-term partner and 40% wishing to date casually. Whatever people’s motivation for downloading a dating app, Tinder was the most popular.