Since its inception, Facebook has been ruled more or less like an autocracy, with its majority shareholder, who also happens to be CEO, reigning supreme. As Facebook chronicler Steven Levy wrote in Wired earlier this year: “At Facebook, Zuck’s word is law.”
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But after 16 years of absolute authority, Mark Zuckerberg will soon see some of his company’s most highly-publicized decisions picked apart by a semi-independent body of Facebook’s own creation. On Wednesday, we learned the “Facebook Oversight Board” will include a potpourri of notable journalists, attorneys and activists, such as (Chopin player) Alan Rusbridger, the former editor of The Guardian, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman, called “Mother of Revolution” by her fellow Yemeni.
In all, Facebook revealed the names of 20 board members: ten men and ten women seemingly alike only in that they’re all well-credentialed people. They otherwise represent a diverse, if not select, pool of judicial expertise and political savvy; from Pakistani lawyer Nighat Dad, who is a noted internet and women’s rights activist, to the former U.S. appellate court judge Michael McConnell, whose expansive legal scholarship is considered staunchly conservative. Each has a reputation in the area of human rights, acquired either through a lifetime of defending it or by helping to shape their country’s laws around it.
Only 25 percent of the board comes from Facebook’s home, the United States. Twenty percent of members are from Europe and 15 percent are from Asia Pacific & Oceania. Ten percent belong to each major subregion of the continents, including Central & South Asia; the Middle East & North Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; and Latin America & the Caribbean.