Meta, Facebook's parent company, said on Wednesday that the social networking platform will withdraw its earlier request for policy guidance to the independent oversight committee. It can be seen that the Committee helped create and support the decision of content review related to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine** As for the reason for doing so, meta claimed that it was for the consideration of "continuous safety and security issues", but did not specify what the problem was or disclose other more details.
Meta proposed to the Committee for the first time to withdraw the policy guidance
In a statement of the transparency center, meta said: the company is still committed to promoting the relevant work of resolving the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and firmly believes that it is taking the right measures to defend its speech and balance the continuing security problems in dealing with the enemy.
Meta also reiterated the relevant measures taken to combat misinformation related to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, including the establishment of a special action center to monitor its own platform and the introduction of new security functions for users in Ukraine and Russia.
In response, the oversight board understood the concerns of the company's management, but also regretted the decision.
Even so, the Committee believes that the withdrawal of this request will not weaken meta's responsibility to carefully deal with the continuous content review caused by this conflict, and they will pay attention to relevant issues.
Over the years, meta (Facebook) has caused quite a lot of criticism for its inconsistent way of reviewing platform content. In view of this, the company established the above-mentioned Supervision Committee in 2019.
The committee will give a binding case decision, which means that meta needs to be responsible and implement it. But the policy recommendations made by the committee are another matter.
Meta submitted the first cases to the Committee from 2021. The latter made the initial decision in January and overturned four fifths of the 20000 cases submitted by Facebook.
Up to now, the cooperation between the two sides is still relatively good. Meta has referred to relevant cases and implemented binding decisions while considering suggestions.
It is reported that the original intention of meta to establish the committee is to help guide relevant policy decisions reviewed around its content, especially in difficult situations such as military conflict. Many cases show that real-time events can easily be deliberately misled by groups from different political positions.
However, meta's withdrawal of its request for policy advice submitted to the supervisory committee last month has largely weakened the committee's ability to provide guidance for the relevant decisions of the technology giant. After all, once this precedent is set, the follow-up will become quite familiar.