- Facebook revealed the first 20 members of the Oversight Board. These are members of the Oversight Board.
Earlier this week, Facebook revealed the first 20 members of the Oversight Board. Facebook’s Oversight Board is an independent group of people who can decide whether content should appear in the Facebook and Instagram News Feed or not.
The board is going to receive cases via content moderation platforms that are linked to Facebook’s reporting system. Once a case is brought up, the board will discuss the case as a group and then issue a final decision.
Facebook originally announced the independent board in November 2018. And the group includes a group of lawyers, journalists, and human rights activists.
“With our size comes a great deal of responsibility and while we have always taken advice from experts on how to best keep our platforms safe, until now, we have made the final decisions about what should be allowed on our platforms and what should be removed. And these decisions often are not easy to make – most judgments do not have obvious, or uncontroversial, outcomes and yet many of them have significant implications for free expression,” said Nick Clegg, VP of Global Affairs and Communications at Facebook.
Facebook said it would give the board $130 million in funding last year and that is expected to cover the operational costs for at least 6 years. And Facebook director of global affairs Brent Harris said that the social network company will implement the decisions from the board unless it violates the law.
So who are the Oversight Board members? Here is the list:
1.) Afia Asantewaa Asare-Kyei (Ghana, Senegal) – Program Manager at the Open Society Initiative for West Africa
2.) Evelyn Aswad (USA) – Professor and Director of the Center for International Business and Human Rights at the University of Oklahoma College of Law
3.) Endy Bayuni (Indonesia) – Senior Editor and Board Member at the Jakarta Post
4.) Catalina Botero-Marino (Colombia) – Dean of the Universidad de los Andes Faculty of Law
5.) Katherine Chen (Taiwan) – Professor of Communication at National Chengchi University
6.) Nighat Dad (Pakistan) – Founder and Executive Director of the Digital Rights Foundation
7.) Jamal Greene (USA) – Professor at Columbia Law School
8.) Pamela Karlan (USA) – Professor and Co-Director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School
9.) Tawakkol Karman (Yemen) – Nobel Peace Prize laureate
10.) Maina Kiai (Kenya) – Director of Human Rights Watch’s Global Alliances and Partnerships Program
11.) Sudhir Krishnaswamy (India) – Vice Chancellor of the National Law School of India University and Co-Founder of the Center for Law and Policy Research
12.) Ronaldo Lemos (Brazil) – Professor at the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro and co-founder of the non-profit Institute for Technology and Society
13.) Michael McConnell (USA) – Professor and Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law Center at Stanford Law School
14.) Julie Owono (Cameroon, France) – Digital rights advocate who serves as the Executive Director of Internet Sans Frontieres
15.) Emi Palmor (Israel) – Former Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Justice
16.) Alan Rusbridger (UK) – Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; Chair of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalist; former editor-in-chief of The Guardian
17.) Andras Sajo (Hungary) – University Professor and Founding Dean of Legal Studies at the Central European University, a former Judge and VP of the European Court of Human Rights
18.) John Samples (USA) – VP and Founder of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute
19.) Nicolas Suzor (Australia) – Professor at the Queensland University of Technology Law School
20.) Helle Thorning-Schmidt (Denmark) – Former Prime Minister of Denmark; CEO of Save the Children
