The annual report of Meta’s Oversight Board reveals a steady transformation in company’s policies, yet underscores persisting challenges related to content moderation and internal policy alignment.
Key Takeaways:
After more than two years in operation, the Oversight Board, an independent entity overseeing Meta’s content moderation and policies, confirms that its recommendations are starting to make a tangible impact. However, the board’s annual report also underscores the need for further improvements, particularly in the realm of content moderation and policy alignment between Instagram and Facebook.
The Oversight Board, comprising nearly two dozen human rights and free speech specialists, has acknowledged an improvement in Meta’s transparency with its user base in its latest annual report. The report marks a shift from the previous year’s critical tone, highlighting the substantive changes Meta has implemented based on the board’s recommendations.
“In 2022, it was encouraging to see that, for the first time, Meta made systemic changes to its rules and how they are enforced, including on user notifications and its rules on dangerous organizations,” the board outlined.
Despite these advances, the report singles out certain areas where Meta is still underperforming. A striking statistic revealed in the report is that Meta altered its initial moderation decision in almost two-thirds of cases, stirring doubts about the efficiency of Meta’s content moderation and the appeal process.
The board expressed concerns over Meta’s delay in aligning policies between Instagram and Facebook, and the company’s decision not to translate guidelines for content moderators into their native languages. The board suggests that “English-only guidance may cause reviewers to miss context and nuance across languages and dialects,” leading to errors in enforcement.
The board has also brought up the ambiguous nature of Meta’s “newsworthiness” exception, which allows some rule-breaking posts to remain if they are considered to have a “public interest value”.
The Oversight Board criticized Meta’s reluctance to provide a direct explanation of the policy, asserting that the procedure for determining the newsworthiness of content remains a mystery.
Despite numerous challenges and delays in its interactions with Meta, including a lengthy wait for access to the company’s analytics tool CrowdTangle, the board reaffirms its commitment to ensuring transparency and accountability in Meta’s operations.
