Decisions made by Facebook's oversight board - which is being developed - will be binding on Facebook, and cannot be overruled by Facebook or CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The company revealed further details of its oversight board on September 17. The oversight board has been in the works since November 2018. Zuckerberg had said in February that Facebook shouldn't have the sole power to control content on the platform. Facebook has now pledged that the oversight body will be operational by November 2020. The board will review content moderation decisions on Facebook, cases can be brought in by Facebook itself initially, and by users at a later stage. What the board will do: Once the board is fully staffed, it will be in charge of adjudicating appeals from users whose content has been removed from Facebook’s platforms. It will also make judgements on cases referred to it by the Facebook itself. For now, the board will begin operations by hearing Facebook initiated cases, and users will be able to appeal to the board by the first half of 2020. What content decisions will the board deal with: Facebook will refer cases that are either "significant" i.e. having real-world impact in terms of severity, scale and relevance to public discourse, or cases with "difficulty" i.e. when the content is dispute or raises questions about current policy or its enforcement. Users can refer cases after they have directly appealed with Facebook. To submit a complaint to the board, a user must have first…
