{"id":15419,"date":"2019-06-24T10:52:06","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T10:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/facebook-makes-another-push-to-shape-and-define-its-own-oversight.html"},"modified":"2019-06-24T10:52:06","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T10:52:06","slug":"facebook-makes-another-push-to-shape-and-define-its-own-oversight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/facebook-makes-another-push-to-shape-and-define-its-own-oversight.html","title":{"rendered":"Facebook makes another push to shape and define its own oversight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook\u2019s <\/a> head of global spin and policy, former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg<\/a>, will give a speech later today providing more detail of the company\u2019s plan to set up an \u2018independent\u2019 external oversight board to which people can appeal content decisions so that Facebook itself is not the sole entity making such decisions.<\/p>\n

In the speech in Berlin, Clegg will apparently admit to Facebook having made mistakes. Albeit, it would be pretty awkward if he came on stage claiming Facebook is flawless and humanity needs to take a really long hard look at itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s in any way conceivable, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s right, for private companies to set the rules of the road for something which is as profoundly important as how technology serves society,\u201d Clegg told BBC Radio 4\u2019s Today program this morning, discussing his talking points ahead of the speech. \u201cIn the end this is not something that big tech companies\u2026 can or should do on their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to see\u2026 companies like Facebook play an increasingly mature role \u2014 not shunning regulation but advocating it in a sensible way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea of creating an oversight board for content moderation and appeals was previously floated<\/a> by Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg. Though it raises way more questions than it resolves \u2014 not least how a board whose existence depends on the underlying commercial platform it is supposed to oversee can possibly be independent of that selfsame mothership; or how board appointees will be selected and recompensed; and who will choose the mix of individuals to ensure the board can reflect the full spectrum diversity of humanity that\u2019s now using Facebook\u2019s 2BN+ user global platform?<\/p>\n

None of these questions were raised let alone addressed in this morning\u2019s BBC Radio 4 interview with Clegg.<\/p>\n

Asked by the interviewer whether Facebook will hand control of \u201csome of these difficult decisions\u201d to an outside body, Clegg said: \u201cAbsolutely. That\u2019s exactly what it means. At the end of the day there is something quite uncomfortable about a private company making all these ethical adjudications on whether this bit of content stays up or this bit of content gets taken down.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd in the really pivotal, difficult issues what we\u2019re going to do \u2014 it\u2019s analogous to a court \u2014 we\u2019re setting up an independent oversight board where users and indeed Facebook will be able to refer to that board and say well what would you do? Would you take it down or keep it up? And then we will commit, right at the outset, to abide by whatever rulings that board makes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking shortly afterwards on the same radio program, Damian Collins, <\/a> who chairs a UK parliamentary committee that has called for Facebook to be investigated by the UK\u2019s privacy and competition regulators<\/a>, suggested the company is seeking to use self-serving self-regulation to evade wider responsibility for the problems its platform creates \u2014 arguing that what\u2019s really needed are state-set broadcast-style regulations overseen by external bodies with statutory powers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re trying to pass on the responsibility,\u201d he said of Facebook\u2019s oversight board. \u201cWhat they\u2019re saying to parliaments and governments is well you make things illegal and we\u2019ll obey your laws but other than that don\u2019t expect us to exercise any judgement about how people use our services.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need as level of regulation beyond that as well. Ultimately we need \u2014 just as have in broadcasting \u2014 statutory regulation based on principles that we set, and an investigatory regulator that\u2019s got the power to go in and investigate, which, under this board that Facebook is going to set up, this will still largely be dependent on Facebook agreeing what data and information it shares, setting the parameters for investigations. Where we need external bodies with statutory powers to be able to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clegg\u2019s speech later today is also slated to spin the idea that Facebook is suffering unfairly from a wider \u201ctechlash\u201d.<\/p>\n

Asked about that during the interview, the Facebook PR seized the opportunity to argue that if Western society imposes too stringent regulations on platforms and their use of personal data there\u2019s a risk of \u201cthrow[ing] the baby out with the bathwater\u201d, with Clegg smoothly reaching for the usual big tech talking points \u2014 claiming innovation<\/a> would be \u201calmost impossible\u201d if there\u2019s not enough of a data free for all, and the West risks being dominated by China, rather than friendly US giants.<\/p>\n

By that logic we\u2019re in a rights race to the bottom \u2014 thanks to the proliferation of technology-enabled global surveillance infrastructure, such as the one operated by Facebook\u2019s business.<\/p>\n

Clegg tried to pass all that off as merely \u2018communications as usual\u2019, making no reference to the scale of the pervasive personal data capture that Facebook\u2019s business model depends upon, and instead arguing its business should be regulated in the same way society regulates \u201cother forms of communication\u201d. Funnily enough, though, your phone isn\u2019t designed to record what you say the moment you plug it in\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople plot crimes on telephones, they exchange emails that are designed to hurt people.\u00a0If you hold up any mirror to humanity you will always see everything that is both beautiful and grotesque about human nature,\u201d Clegg argued, seeking to manage expectations vis-a-vis what regulating Facebook should mean. \u201cOur job \u2014 and this is where Facebook has a heavy responsibility and where we have to work in partnership with governments \u2014 is to minimize the bad and to maximize the good.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also said Facebook supports \u201cnew rules of the road\u201d to ensure a \u201clevel playing field\u201d for regulations related to privacy; election rules; the boundaries of hate speech vs free speech; and data portability \u2014\u00a0 making a push to flatten regulatory variation which is often, of course, based on societal, cultural and historical differences, as well as reflecting regional democratic priorities.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not at all clear how any of that nuance would or could be factored into Facebook\u2019s preferred universal global \u2018moral\u2019 code \u2014 which it\u2019s here, via Clegg (a former European politician), leaning on regional governments to accept.<\/p>\n

Instead of societies setting the rules they<\/em> choose for platforms like Facebook, Facebook\u2019s lobbying muscle is being flexed to make the case for a single generalized set of \u2018standards\u2019 which won\u2019t overly get in the way of how it monetizes people\u2019s data.<\/p>\n

And if we don\u2019t agree to its \u2018Western\u2019 style surveillance, the threat is we\u2019ll be at the mercy of even lower Chinese standards\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got this battle really for tech dominance between the United States and China,\u201d said Clegg, reheating Zuckerberg\u2019s senate pitch last year<\/a> when the Facebook founder urged a trade off of privacy rights to allow Western companies to process people\u2019s facial biometrics to not fall behind China. \u201cIn China there\u2019s no compunction about how data is used, there\u2019s no worry about privacy legislation, data protection and so on \u2014 we should not emulate what the Chinese are doing but we should keep our ability in Europe and North America to innovate and to use data proportionately and innovat[iv]ely.<\/p>\n

\u201cOtherwise if we deprive ourselves of that ability I can predict that within a relatively short period of time we will have tech domination from a country with wholly different sets of values to those that are shared in this country and elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s rather more likely is the emergence of discrete Internets where regions set their own standards \u2014 and indeed we\u2019re already seeing signs of splinternets emerging.<\/p>\n

Clegg even briefly brought this up \u2014 though it\u2019s not clear why (and he avoided this point entirely) Europeans should fear the emergence of a regional digital ecosystem that bakes respect for human rights into digital technologies.<\/p>\n

With European privacy rules also now setting global standards by influencing policy discussions elsewhere \u2014 including the US \u2014 Facebook\u2019s nightmare is that higher standards than it wants to offer Internet users will become the new Western norm.<\/p>\n

\n

Listening to Nick Clegg <\/a> on the @BBCr4today<\/a> answer for the dystopian world of Facebook \u2013 from live-streaming massacres to enabling suicides. Zuckerberg hired a former deputy PM so he could \u201cunderstand Europe.\u201d His proposed remedy? An oversight committee. Pull the other one.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Tom Watson (@tom_watson) June 24, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Collins made short work of Clegg\u2019s techlash point, pointing out that if Facebook wants to win back users\u2019 and society\u2019s trust it should stop acting like it has everything to hide and actually accept public scrutiny.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve done this to themselves,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they want redemption, if they want to try and wipe the slate clean for Mack Zuckerberg he should open himself up more. He should be prepared to answer more questions publicly about the data that they gather, whether other companies like Cambridge Analytica had access to it, the nature of the problem of disinformation on the platform. Instead they are incredibly defensive, incredibly secretive a lot of the time. And it arouses suspicion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people were quite surprised to discover the lengths to which people go to to gather data about us \u2014 even people who don\u2019t even use Facebook. And that\u2019s what\u2019s made them suspicious. So they have to put their own house in order if they want to end this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year Collins\u2019 DCMS committee repeatedly asked Zuckerberg to testify to its enquiry into online disinformation \u2014 and was repeatedly snubbed\u2026<\/p>\n

\n

Zuckerberg again snubs UK parliament over call to testify<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\n

Where\u2019s the accountability Facebook?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\n

Zuckerberg rejects facetime call for answers from five parliaments<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Collins also debunked an attempt by Clegg to claim there\u2019s no evidence of any Russian meddling on Facebook\u2019s platform targeting the UK\u2019s 2016 EU referendum \u2014 pointing out that Facebook previously admitted to a small amount of Russian ad spending<\/a> that did target the EU referendum, before making the wider point that it\u2019s very difficult for anyone outside Facebook to know how its platform gets used\/misused; Ads are just the tip of the political disinformation iceberg.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to investigate externally, because the key factors \u2014 like the use of tools like groups on Facebook, the use of inauthentic fake accounts boosting Russian content, there have been studies showing that\u2019s still going on and was going on during the [US] parliamentary elections, there\u2019s been no proper audit done during the referendum, and in fact when we first went to Facebook and said there\u2019s evidence of what was going on in America in 2016, did this happen during the referendum as well, they said to us well we won\u2019t look unless you can prove it happened,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s certainly evidence of suspicious Russian activity during the referendum and elsewhere,\u201d Collins added.<\/p>\n

We asked Facebook for Clegg\u2019s talking points for today\u2019s speech but the company declined to share more detail ahead of time.<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/boW-wJX75aU\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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