Hiding in Plain Sight: The Meta Oversight Board as Inspiration for Corporate Accountability Beyond Social Media
The Meta Oversight Board provides a check on Meta’s content moderation by making binding decisions on difficult cases and providing independent recommendations for how Meta can improve the substance and enforcement of its content policies. The Oversight Board is one of the most innovative and impactful corporate accountability initiatives I have witnessed and (as far as I know) is unlike anything else that exists today.
There is now speculation about whether a version of Meta Oversight Board could be adopted by other social media companies facing similar challenges, such as the out-of-court dispute settlement mechanism envisioned by Article 21 of the EU Digital Services Act.
However, while the topic of whether other social media companies should move in this direction is important, I have been intrigued by an entirely different question. Specifically, I have found myself pondering whether innovative approaches established by the Oversight Board could be applied to other difficult challenges in the corporate responsibility field, well beyond social media.
I should declare that I played a role in creating the Oversight Board via a human rights assessment prior to its creation and provided input into its governance charter, byelaws, and overall theory of change. This distinctly creative process—we couldn’t just benchmark other companies already doing this—has sparked my interest in whether similar creativity could be applied in other contexts.
To help answer this question it is worth highlighting a few prominent features of the Oversight Board:
Funding: At $280m in total funding so far, the financial support provided to the Oversight Board far exceeds other accountability initiatives. This is serious money for serious issues and enables many of the features that follow.
Expertise: The twenty-two members of the Oversight Board bring a wide variety of perspectives, experience, and insights to Oversight Board decisions. Their deep and specialist expertise adds significant weight to Board decisions and recommendations.
Public analysis: Each case selected by the Oversight Board involves substantial analysis which is ultimately published for the public good. Unlike Meta itself, the Oversight Board is not constrained by the need to take urgent action, and so has the luxury of time to undertake sophisticated analysis of complex dilemmas. The result is some of the most impressive business and human rights analysis available in the social media industry and a notable body of work with relevance that extends far beyond Meta. I highly recommend reading a few Oversight Board case decisions for a sample of this analysis.
Decisions and recommendations: The Oversight Board has decision making powers on individual cases, but these are miniscule in number compared to the total number of cases and are useful mainly for their precedent setting character. Far more significant are the non-binding recommendations that accompany each case; while these recommendations are optional for Meta to adopt, Meta responds to each of them thoroughly (and publicly) and they have relevance far beyond Meta.
Governance and management: The Oversight Board’s founding documents did a good job of establishing important objectives from the start (such as human rights assessment and a focus on the most difficult cases) and eliminated tension between conflicting interests by providing a clarity of purpose, governance, and independence. This direction has been reinforced by an impressive secretariat packed full of thoughtful, diligent, and strategic human rights experts facilitating the work of Oversight Board itself.
Freedom of expression in a social media context can be complex, nuanced, and intractable, so it may be reasonable to conclude that the Oversight Board is uniquely suited to social media. But what if we thought creatively about other difficult problems, challenges, or dilemmas that would benefit from these features?
This thought experiment does not need to be constrained to individual companies acting alone, and there may be ways to apply an Oversight Board model at a multi-company or industry-wide level, such as offering one overall expert body that many different companies could go to seeking advice.
The following ideas come to mind to me, but I would be very interested to hear of other ones.
Climate change and infrastructure assets: The disposal and closure of fossil fuel and mining infrastructure (e.g., extraction, processing, transportation) is needed to achieve global climate change goals but comes with many dilemmas. Simply divesting from an asset doesn’t change anything if a disinterested party buys it, while closing assets can adversely impact people and communities. Companies could seek independent direction and recommendations for how to make this transition responsibly.
Drug research, development, and sales: Pharmaceutical companies are faced with the challenge of earning sufficient funds to support a strong research and development pipeline while making sales in locations with widely varying abilities to pay and with important access to health obligations to fulfill. Companies could seek independent analysis for the ethical dilemmas arising from this challenge and respond with thoughtful explanations of their approach.
Access to remedy in the context of AI: The deployment of AI involves entire AI systems with different companies playing different roles. It can be challenging to attribute cause when harm occurs, making access to remedy more complex than it might be in other contexts. Rather than waiting for regulation, companies across AI systems may benefit from a mechanism to review real-life cases, draw conclusions, and establish a basis for attributing cause.
Sales and investment due diligence: Some of the most challenging due diligence I have been engaged in has been downstream sales due diligence—especially in the technology industry, but I assume similar dilemmas exist elsewhere too. Companies could establish independent panels that review individual sales opportunities for consistency with policy commitments, make recommendations (such as sell, don’t sell, sell with conditions) and provide useful analysis to inform future cases. A similar model could be deployed for investment due diligence.
Company engagement in authoritarian contexts and conflict affected areas: As I have written elsewhere, I am concerned that it is increasingly common to lean towards market exit when faced with challenges associated with conflict and authoritarianism—this instinct is understandable, but often not the best outcome for directly affected stakeholders. I can foresee value in independent, authoritative, and expert input into how companies can “remain responsibly” and address dilemmas where there is no good option available.
I am sharing these ideas in the spirit of brainstorming and with the knowledge that the approach taken would not replicate the Meta approach or scale of funding precisely. A lot could be achieved with 10% of the funds and just a few of these features.
However, Meta had the foresight to create something that did not exist before, and the optimist in me believes that other companies can do the same. If we removed constraints for a moment, and thought creatively, what could we create?