#291: The Facebook Oversight Board

Tech Policy Podcast

TechFreedom

Technology

4.8 • 45 Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2021

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Last week, Facebook’s new Oversight Board issued a much-discussed ruling on the platform’s suspension of Donald Trump. Two of the Board’s members, Ronaldo Lemos and John Samples, join Corbin and Berin for a wide-ranging discussion on the Trump decision, the Board, and content moderation.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Facebook has created an oversight board to review certain content moderation decisions.
0:13.0	Few people knew that a couple weeks ago.
0:16.0	Many more know it now, after the board's May 5th ruling on Facebook's decision to suspend Donald J. Trump from his
0:22.5	Facebook and Instagram accounts. The board affirmed the initial suspension, but told Facebook that the
0:28.8	suspension should not have been made indefinite. It called on Facebook to re-examine this,
0:33.8	quote, arbitrary penalty and to apply an appropriate remedy within six months.
0:39.8	What is the board? What is it meant to do? Is it likely to succeed? And what would success look
0:46.4	like? We'll be talking about all that and more on this episode of the Tech Policy Podcast.
0:52.6	I'm Corbyn Barthold. I'm pleased to be joined today by two members of the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Corbyn Barthold.
0:59.1	I'm pleased to be joined today by two members of the Oversight Board.
1:05.8	Rinaldo Lemos is a professor at Rio de Janeiro State University Law School and a partner at Reno Penteato law firm in Brazil, a leading law firm in that country.
1:12.6	He's an immensely accomplished lawyer and scholar of technology, intellectual property, media, and public policy. John Samples is a
1:20.7	vice president at the Cato Institute. He founded and now directs Cato's Center for Representative
1:26.3	Government, which studies freedom of speech,
1:29.7	the First Amendment, and other aspects of American political institutions.
1:34.3	With us also is Favorite Son of the show, Barron Soka.
1:39.2	So let's just dive right into some of the hard questions that this decision, the Trump decision, raises.
1:47.0	Mark Zuckerberg was clearly hoping that the board would make hard calls, thereby shielding Facebook, at least in theory, from some of the heat that comes with those calls.
1:59.4	There's been a pretty widespread reaction. I think it's fair to say that
2:03.2	the board kind of said, we're not going to do that, at least not if you don't give us clear guidance
2:09.1	at advance. So gentlemen, how do you see your role? You know, if they made a schoolhouse rock video
2:16.5	about you, what would it say?
	...

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