The new commission which might emulate its Oversight Board comes after years of criticism following Facebook's election policies dating back to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook Inc has approached academics and policy experts about forming a commission to advise it on global election-related matters, the New York Times reported, citing five people with knowledge of the matter. The proposed “election commission” would decide on matters such as the viability of political ads and action to be taken on election-related misinformation. The report said that Facebook may announce the commission in a few months as part of its preparation for the 2022 midterm elections. In the last few years, Facebook has come under criticism by many who have accused the social media platform of allowing political misinformation to fester and spread online. By outsourcing election matters to a panel of experts, Facebook can sidestep criticism of bias by political groups, two people in the know of the matter told New York Times. Similar to Facebook’s Oversight Board In 2018, the social media platform created the Oversight Board, a group of journalism, legal, and policy experts who decide whether the company was correct to remove certain posts from the platform, the report said. If the election commission is formed, it would emulate this Oversight Board. In January 2021, the Oversight Board reviewed the suspension of former President Donald Trump’s account after the storming of the US Capitol. The Board found that Facebook’s ruling to indefinitely ban Trump was not based on any…
