Facebook’s Thoughts on Its Oversight Board
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2021
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There have been a thousand hot takes about the Facebook Oversight Board, the Supreme Court-like thing Facebook set up to oversee its content moderation. The Board generated so much press coverage when it handed down its decision on Donald Trump’s account that Kaitlyn Tiffany at The Atlantic called the whole circus “like Shark Week, but less scenic.” Everyone weighed in, from Board Members, to lawmakers, academics, critics and even Lawfare podcast hosts. But there’s a group we haven’t heard much from: the people at Facebook who are actually responsible for sending cases to the Board and responding to the Board’s policy recommendations. Everyone focuses on the Board Members, but the people at Facebook are the ones that can make the Board experiment actually translate into change—or not. So this week for our Arbiters of Truth series on our online information environment, in light of Facebook’s first quarterly update on the Board, Evelyn Douek talked with Jennifer Broxmeyer and Rachel Lambert, both of whom work at Facebook on Facebook’s side of the Oversight Board experiment. What do they think of the first six or so months of the Oversight Board’s work? How do they grade their own efforts? Why is their mark different from Evelyn’s? And, will the Oversight Board get jurisdiction over the metaverse?
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | The reality is very different when you're inside. |
| 0:38.0 | And so we have thousands of people across the product team, |
| 0:42.0 | Rachel's team, policy team, and the operations team just putting out fires, |
| 0:49.0 | dealing with new threats, dealing with new safety issues, |
| 0:53.0 | dealing with bad actors who are trying to skirt the rules. |
| 0:58.0 | As well as trying to proactively sort of make the whole system work better. |
| 1:02.0 | And I think it's very easy to lose sight of the whole. |
| 1:06.0 | I'm Evelyn Duac, and this is the LawFair podcast August 5, 2021. |
| 1:12.0 | There have been a thousand hot takes on the Facebook oversight board. |
| 1:16.0 | The Supreme Court-like thing that Facebook set up to oversee its content moderation. |
| 1:21.0 | The board generated so much press coverage when it handed down its decision |
| 1:25.0 | on Donald Trump's account that Kate and Tiffany at the Atlantic called the whole circus |
| 1:29.0 | like Shark Week, but less scenic. |
| 1:32.0 | Everyone weighed in, from board members to lawmakers, academics, critics, |
| 1:36.0 | and law fair podcast hosts. |
| 1:39.0 | But there's a group we haven't heard much from. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Lawfare Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Lawfare Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

