Meta's oversight committee on Wednesday called on the company to assess the potential negative impact of recent policy changes on human rights. The board of directors requested a comprehensive policy change at the beginning of the first year and published its first 11 case decisions.
Meta's policy changes in January include overhauling content reviews, lifting restrictions on popular button political topics such as immigration, and ending third-party fact-checking X-style community notes. In announcing its policy changes, Meta said that even if the situation becomes ugly, its platform will be “free to express itself” somewhere. In the video statement, CEO Mark Zuckerberg added:[W]E'TOAST has reached the point where there are too many mistakes and too many censorship. Recent elections also feel like a cultural turning point in prioritizing speeches again. ”
In a press release on Wednesday, the board expressed concern about Meta's updated policy and noted that “no public information” [was] Shared prior human rights due diligence performed by the company before the change. The board calls on Meta to address the adverse effects its policies may have on communities such as LGBGQ+ people (including minors) and immigration. In addition, the board requires the board to ask the Meta to review the effectiveness of the community annotation system, especially the effect on misunderstandings.
As for the decision itself, the board supports meta on many issues but disagrees with others, with their greater concern about potential human rights violations. The board overturned Meta's decision to relate to three posts related to the riots in the UK last summer, noting that “they're a big possibility that they incite additional and imminent unrest and violence.” They asked for the removal of the posts. In different circumstances, the board also overturned the meta-decision to keep the content “including racist slander and generalization of being a sexual predator” and pointed to concerns about “dehumanized speech” for people with disabilities, believing that the company’s system failed to detect.
However, the board maintained some of Meta's controversial decisions, including allowing two bathroom access to trans people and taking part in sports. Although these positions are “intentionally provocative…they are related to issues of public concern and do not cause possible violence or discrimination.”
The oversight committee requested a book that was released a few weeks after the release of former Facebook employee Sarah Wynn-Williams, which talked about her time at the company and observed the patterns of Zuckerberg's announcement of new policies without consulting and ignoring the potential harm caused by the platform. It was also the second day after Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom testified. He said Instagram received “zero” funding from Zuckerberg, working to spend trusts and security resources in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Therefore, when it comes to security, the meta doesn't look good in many ways.
The fact is that Meta's catastrophic human rights impacts have been well documented. For example, it played an important role in the Rohingya genocide and systematically reviewed the content about Palestine. The human rights movement even recognized the meta's changes “will standardize anti-LGBTQ+ misinformation and intensity to fight LGBTQ+ harassment”, and in February, Amnesty International warned that Meta's policies could exacerbate more mass violence and genocide.
The board’s requirement to ask the meta to assess its policy implications is cool, but all of this is unclear what this will be. After all, Meta's new policy blatantly uses dog barking terms like “transgenderism.” Training materials on the newly allowed speech include “immigrants are dirty, dirty shit,” “blacks are more violent than whites,” or “trans people are mentally ill.” Perhaps it is time to consider the hasty policy of Yuanyuan and its impact is not a supervision.
