What is the Facebook oversight board? As the Facebook community grows both in strength and numbers it has become increasingly difficult for the Facebook platform to be making decisions on its own regarding speech and online safety. With this in mind, the platform has come up with an oversight board that will help review difficult decisions content related on both Facebook and Instagram.
Facebook Oversight Board
The oversight board will make binding decisions on content. With this in place, whatever is the verdict of the board Facebook has got to follow up with it and implement them unless doing so may violate the law. Also, the oversight board will be able to issue policy recommendations.
The Facebook oversight board will help the platform answer most of the difficult questions presented to the platform. they will decide on what to take down and what to leave up and also provide a reason for their answer.
The board has its own independence and will use its independence to judge and support the right to free expression by users and also ensure that the rights are respected to the maximum. Decisions made by the board will reverse or uphold the decisions made by Facebook on content and its decisions will be binding.
What Is the Purpose of Facebook’s Oversight Board?
The purpose of this board is simple. Their main purpose is to help promote freedom of expression. And they do this by making independent, principled decisions in regards to content on Instagram and Facebook by issuing recommendations on relevant Facebook company content policy.
The oversight board consists of 40 members from all regions of the world representing diverse sets of backgrounds, disciplines, and cultures. The members of the board will be empowered to select content cases for review and to say yes or no to content decisions by Facebook.
The board is different from Facebook’s existing content review process. The board rather will review a selected number of problematic cases and also determine if decisions are made in accordance with Facebook’s values and policies.
How Do I Appeal a Facebook Decision?
On Facebook, there are two types of content decisions that you can appeal to the oversight board of course. One of the decisions that can be appealed is the decision about your content and secondly the decision about the content by their users that you have reported.
If you disagree about a decision that your content should not be taken down and you want to appeal to the oversight board, you will need to go through the “request a review process.” Also if you reported content by others and it wasn’t taken down and you want to appeal to the oversight board, you also must first go through the “request another review process.”
To appeal a decision that Facebook has made about your content;
- Go to your support inbox on Facebook and click your violations.
- Open the update sent about Facebook’s decision. And if you are eligible for an oversight review, you will get access to an oversight board reference number. The number begins with “FB” followed by eight numbers and letters.
- Follow the on-screen instructions which will take you to the oversight board website to complete your appeal.
- You will see options to log in with a Facebook or Instagram account on the oversight board website. You will need to log in to the account your reference number was issued to.
- After logging in to the website, you will be asked to provide responses to a simple few questions in order to complete the appeal. Your responses to the question will help provide the needed information about your post and in the process help, the board understands why you think the social media platform has made the wrong decision.
After submitting your appeal, it will be decided on whether to review it or not by the oversight board. The board only accepts a certain number of eligible appeals to review therefore it just might be that yours may not be selected.
You also can check the status of your appeal by logging in to the oversight board’s website using the reference number you were given. Also, note that you have 15 days to appeal a decision from when it is made to the oversight board. And after that window is closed you will not be able to submit an appeal.
