Report from the Washington Post
In Brief – The Global Coalition for Tech Justice, an international alliance of progressive Big Tech critics, has released an open letter calling on the quasi-independent Meta Oversight Board to resign to protest the company’s changes to its content moderation regime. The Oversight Board, created by Facebook in 2020, is made up of legal, digital rights, free speech, and human rights experts from around the world, and is empowered to review Meta content moderation cases to ensure fair and transparent decisions. The panel has also made various policy and enforcement recommendations to the company. Meta is committed to abide by the panel’s specific case decisions, for example whether to allow a specific post or user to remain on a platform, and to consider, but not necessarily implement, recommendations to change rules and practices. As President Trump was preparing to re-enter the White House in January, Meta announced big content moderation changes, including eliminating official fact-checkers and replacing them with an X-style community notes program, and changing its speech codes and automated filters to relax limits on language and commentary some call hate speech. Although the coalition letter decries Meta’s changes across the board, they appear most focused on what they call the dissemination of hate speech targeting “marginalized groups”. The Oversight Board’s co-chairs released a statement saying that independent oversight was more important than ever.
Context – Founders and top executives from digital giants publicly embracing President Trump, backing his inauguration, and walking back progressive corporate policies, was a big change for tech companies with leaders and workforces that have long leaned leftward. Reports surfaced of “quiet rebellions” among employees, although less heady job conditions appear to be tamping down protests. Over the past four years, whistleblowers were an increasingly common tech company occurrence, impacting Facebook, Amazon, TikTok, Uber, Instagram and Microsoft. Might pushback eventually take that form?