This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, May 6, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Facebook, like all large private internet platforms, has a problem with content moderation.

Their solution is to create an oversight board

with authority to moderate content within community guidelines, and importantly, the group is largely

independent from Facebook, the company. It's one of a wide variety of approaches. The Company.

It's one of a wide variety of approaches that platforms have taken to make decisions about what content goes and what content stays.

Cato's John Samples is one of five Americans who will serve on that board.

We spoke yesterday.

In creating this board, what is the problem or problems that Facebook is trying to solve.

Facebook has had a problem for a couple of years related to its content moderation.

Now you might wonder if you live outside of the policy world what content moderation is and basically

This is just the idea based on the on the truth that Facebook is a private entity that has a right to

The managers of Facebook have a right to run the business the way they see fit

That Facebook has passed and has created over maybe 10 years, but really in the last three to four years for sure, standards of what can appear on their platform, what can appear in Facebook timelines

and so on.

And in some cases also what needs to be edited or downranked or in some ways not thrown

off the platform, which some stuff is, but just put further down your timeline fewer people see it so on.

So why is that?

Well, I think ultimately the people who run Facebook are running a business and they want as many customers

as possible. They want the company to be as successful as possible and indeed they owe

that to their owners. You have a responsibility to maximize shareholder value. So that means that

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