Dr. Monika Bickert:

We are launching the oversight board and while we do not think it is the perfect answer to all of these challenges, we think it is important to give people who have had content removed from Facebook the opportunity to appeal to an independent body. To go quickly through the questions posed by the Chair, we put out a charter in September 2019 that was the result of nearly a year of consultation in many countries with many stakeholders from different backgrounds. The result is that the board will have up to about 40 members. Those members will be chosen through a collaborative process between the co-chairs of the board, who will be initially selected by Facebook. Those co-chairs will then choose the additional members, with input from Facebook. That said, the decisions made by those members will be independent and binding. They will be paid by a trust that Facebook will fund, but those funds will be held and administered independently.

I will clarify the way that cases will get to this board. We have millions of cases every week where we make decisions. This board will be able to choose from among the decisions appealed to it by users. If Facebook finds a case where it is hard to make a decision, we will also be able to proactively send something to the board for it to make a decision.