FB to have independent content moderators from early next year
Following intense pressure by lawmakers and public on Facebook about personal data of users being misused by private players and inability to moderate advertisement content on its platform, the social media giant has decided to make a free governing body to check its content. Last week during a conference call with reporters Facebook confirmed that the company has decided to set up a body which will uphold users’ voice and will also recognize the need for keeping their accounts safe. In a new blog firm’s CEO Zuckerberg has stated that this board will be launched in 2019 once the firm decides names of members that will be part of this new management body and how the petitioning process will be conducted.
In his blog he wrote that members of this governing body will be accountable to Facebook community to understand and fulfill its needs and complaints. The firm has only now started to take full interest in moderating content on its platform and banned pages that were being operated by controversial website Infowars and Alex Jones its founder. Online information sites like Reddit and Wikipedia have been working for several years now with volunteer group moderators that debate and set rules of content and also remove unacceptable content.
Facebook has not specified if the monitoring body will have paid employees or external volunteers. This was because the conversation quickly turned to discussion of NYT’s report about Facebook using services of DFA to discredit its opponents and businessman George Soros. Zukerberg said that he was not aware that the firm had been hired by Facebook until he read the report and after that he asked his team to dismiss Defines immediately. He supported COO Sheryl Sandberg during the discussion calling her a great co-worker who has been responsible for Facebook’s growth and confirmed that she too was unaware of Definer’s relationship with the firm till the news broke out.