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The supervisory committee is It is considering its influence over Meta and its ability to change the policies that govern Facebook and Instagram. The committee said it received 398,597 appeals in 2023, the majority of which came from Facebook users. But the committee only handled a fraction of those cases, issuing decisions on 53 in total.
But the committee suggested that the cases it chose could have a significant impact on Meta users, including influencing improvements to Meta’s strike system and its “account status” feature that helps users check whether their posts violate the company’s rules.
But examining the committee’s overall influence is more complicated. The group says it sent Meta a total of 266 recommendations between January 2021 and May 2024. Of those, the company has fully or partially implemented 75 and reported “progress” on 81. The rest were either rejected, “omitted or restructured,” or Meta claimed some implementation but did not provide evidence to the committee. (There are currently five recommendations awaiting a response.) These figures raise the question of how much Meta intends to change in response to a committee it established.
Notably, the report contains no criticism of Meta, nor any analysis of Meta’s efforts (or lack thereof) to follow through on its recommendations. The report cites a recommendation to Meta to suspend a former prime minister for six months for reversing the company’s decision to allow a video that could incite violence to remain up, but it makes no mention of Meta’s refusal to suspend the former prime minister’s account or to further clarify its rules for public figures.
The report also touches on thorny issues the committee may tackle in the coming months. It says it wants to look into content “demotes,” or what some Facebook and Instagram users call “shadow bans.” (The term is loaded for Meta, which denies that its algorithms intentionally and without reason punish users.) “One area we would like to explore is content demotion, where platforms limit the visibility of posts without notifying users,” the oversight committee wrote.
For now, it’s unclear how the group will tackle the issue. Currently, the committee’s mandate allows it to comment on specific content that Meta has removed or left up after users challenged it. But it’s possible the committee will tackle the issue in a different way. A spokesperson for the oversight committee noted that the group raised concerns about content that was demoted for its content related to the war between Israel and Hamas. “The decision to demote Meta is very unclear, so the committee wants to investigate this further,” the spokesperson said.