The Oversight Board punts on Trump⁠↗

Many pundits seem to delight in observing that the board can’t fix any of the “real” problems with Facebook, a view that is true at the level of questions like “how do we fix our broken information sphere and polarized society?”, and false at the level of many questions of vital importance to to individual users. Questions like: why did Facebook delete a post in which I criticized the government? Why can’t I see strikes against my account? Why are policies enforced inconsistently? Why are US politicians held to a higher standard than foreign leaders? Why aren’t the community standards available in Punjabi? People who don’t see those as “real” problems with Facebook have strangely little empathy for the billions of people who use the company’s services, even as those same critics style themselves as noble sentinels of a free society.

When it comes to real accountability, the board cannot substitute for government regulation. What’s strange is the degree to which otherwise sane people observe this state of affairs and criticize the board for it. For now at least, we live under a democratically elected government. We could pass laws. We could write regulations. We could form a new federal agency to oversee platforms. There are levers here that we can pull. We should pull them.