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With Regulation Comes Safeguards, Too, Says Facebook Oversight Board Chair

Recently, Facebook has formed a committee to improve its content moderation and regulation.

One could remember that Facebook has suffered from significant criticisms and even boycott for some brands earlier this year over its failure to address some regulation and safety issues regarding data privacy.

To somehow create more stability to this issue, the social media giant has established a panel to help focus on this.

“If regulation gets too heavy, it actually will impact freedom of speech very heavily,” told the former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

One of the co-chairs of an ostensibly independent board also envisions the need for more global regulation of social media and is concerned that free speech is at risk.

“I believe in regulation, I believe that politics has to play a role,” she also added.

“I also think we have to be a little bit careful than just demanding regulation, because at some point it will just tip over and be a regulation on our freedom of speech, and I don’t think any of us want that.”

The announcement is expected to have its full strength, as the body members reach 40 in number.

Moreover, the social media company, which is also the center for attention for hate speech and abusing its market power, has vowed the board will be fully independent and that its recommendations will be heeded accordingly to achieve results.

Thorning-Schmidt also reinforced this saying the hat she and others would not have joined had they not believed the promise.

In her description and articulation of her vision to the committee, she expressed, “what we are trying to do is basically socialize the decisions [as to] what content stays up on the platform and what content comes down.”

The goal, she quipped, is to “socialize these decisions, make them transparent, and also for the first time make it possible for users of Facebook and Instagram to complain when they’re not happy with Facebook’s decisions on content.”

Adding that a global body can take over the oversight, “I do think it’s obvious to most people that we can’t carry on in a world where it’s Facebook, and ultimately Mark Zuckerberg, that takes decisions on what content gets removed or stays up,” she further disclosed.

In the end, she refuted that while the oversight board “is a step in the right direction,” there would be, “obviously it would be better if the U.N. or an international body like that could do this regulation, because it is global and it needs some kind of regulation, but this is a first step in the right direction.”

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