Meta’s Oversight Board to Elon Musk: Stop Pissing Off Twitter’s Advertisers

The Oversight Board is an independent organization funded by Meta, formed for the purposes of reviewing users’ appeals to the company’s content decisions. Since its founding in 2018, The Oversight Board has weighed in on several high profile cases, with the most notable being its decision to uphold a January 2021 ban on former president Donald Trump’s account. Though the Oversight Board says its decisions are binding, some have called into question the extent of the organization’s independence and effectiveness.

The Oversight Board’s words of wisdom come days after Musk said he was interested in forming his own counsel to weigh-in on content moderation decisions at Twitter. In a tweet, the new CEO said Twitter would form a “content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.” Musk said he would refrain from making any major content decisions or account reinstatements (looking at you Donny) until that council convenes.

That idea appeared to resonate with Rusbridger who spoke approvingly of the council, but expressed skepticism over whether or not Musk would actually deliver.

“It took Mark Zuckerberg around 15 years to realise he shouldn’t have untrammelled [sic] power over the speech of billions,” Rusbridger said in a statement following the event. “It took Elon Musk about three days. But does he mean it?”

Who exactly would make up said council remains uncertain, however, Hunter-Torrick left open the possibility of an Oversight Board-Twitter partnership. Here it’s worth noting that though the Oversight Board was intended with Facebook in mind, Meta executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested it could deliberate on content cases for other companies as well.

“We expect the board will only hear a small number of cases at first, but over time we hope it will expand its scope and potentially include more companies across the industry as well,” Zuckerberg said of the Oversight Board’s purview back in 2019.

So, while it seems unlikely, it’s not impossible the very same Oversight Board offering Musk advice could one day weigh in on Twitter’s thorniest content issues. Whether or not that’s a good thing probably depends on whether or not you think it’s a great idea to have a Meta bank rolled organization make content proclamations across multiple avenues of online speech.