A member of a new oversight board that will scrutinise decisions by Facebook to remove posts from its main platform and Instagram has said the social media giant must do more to eliminate hate speech and misinformation.
Katherine Chen, former commissioner at Taiwan’s national communications commission, is one of 20 members of Facebook’s new Oversight Board which also includes representatives from Australia, Taiwan, Pakistan, the United States and the United Kingdom and was first announced by founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2018.
The newly formed board will initially scrutinise six cases of hate speech, nudity and violence in Facebook’s first attempt to develop stronger standards. “The cases may change Facebook policy,” Ms. Chen said. “If we make a decision on a case, then Facebook has to follow and respond to our decision.”
The announcement of the board’s first six cases comes amid heightened scrutiny of social media policies in Australia and with rival platform Twitter facing a government backlash after failing to remove a fabricated image shared by a deputy director in China’s Foreign Ministry.
Twitter was on Monday trying to assess whether the image had violated its terms of service after Prime Minister Scott Morrison called a press conference to demand the post be taken down, labelling it “repugnant” and “truly offensive”. Twitter has censored multiple replies to the image for violating its Twitter rules but not the original post itself.
Read the article by Zoe Samios in The Age.