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The Facebook Oversight Board will let users ask to have content removed

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The Facebook Oversight Board has expanded its powers to content removal.

Image: Eynav Raphael / Protocol

The Facebook Oversight Board dramatically expanded its powers today by inviting Facebook and Instagram users to appeal to have content removed from the platforms, rather than just appeal to have content restored after it has already been taken down.

The decision-making process for content removal will be about the same as the one for content restoration. Among the Oversight Board's first eight decisions, the group has overturned six of Facebook's removals and upheld two. The Board will also have to soon reach a decision about whether or not to overturn Facebook's decision to ban former President Trump from the platform, after the company referred the decision to the Board in January.

One of the original 20 board members, former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, has already suggested that the Board needs more power than just the ability to overturn or uphold content removals, and that board members are frustrated by the "take it down or leave it up" paradigm.

Anna Kramer

Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.

facebookoversight boardcontent moderation
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