A total of six appeals, which involve content removed under the rules laid down by Facebook against hate speech, nudity, and misinformation, will soon be reviewed by the Oversight Board, a body that takes content moderation decisions in Facebook.
The board has accepted its first six cases for review. After a public comment on the issue that is opened for seven days, the board will begin its process to decide on the removal of the posts.
Most of the appellants include users from outside the US, who have posted the non-English contents on their Facebook wall. To allegedly raise awareness among the users about the Horrible Words, one user posted the screenshots a former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s offensive tweets.
Another user who allegedly posted Joseph Goebbels’s quote appealed by saying that the post was comparing Goebbel’s words with fascist forces in US politics.
A five-member panel will review each of the cases. This panel will also include a member who belongs to the region of the language in which the original content is posted. Within 90 days, Facebook will act on the decisions taken by these panels. The oversight board includes digital rights activists, a former European Court of Human Rights judge András Sajó.
The five members board was announced in May this year. The users who submitted five of the incidents have appealed more than 20,000 decisions since the option in October this year. The last, which deals with the misinformation related to the coronavirus pandemic, was taken up by Facebook itself.
A video, which criticised the French health officials for not authorising hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19, was removed by the moderators. The video inaccurately presented hydroxychloroquine as a treatment. The company later used it as an example of the challenges while addressing the risk of misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Chief Executive officer of the giant social media platform, Mark Zuckerberg has termed the oversight board as the supreme court of Facebook. The board is supposed to adopt a fair process for the appeals of the users.
