The Oversight Board has published its latest <\/a> looking at its influence on Meta and ability to shift the policies that govern Facebook and Instagram. The board says that in 2023 it received 398,597 appeals, the vast majority of which came from Facebook users. But it took on only a tiny fraction of those cases, issuing a total of 53 decisions.<\/p>\n The board suggests, however, that the cases it selects can have an outsize impact on Meta\u2019s users. For example, it credits its work for influencing improvements to Meta\u2019s strike system and the \u201caccount status\u201d feature that helps users check if their posts have violated any of the company\u2019s rules.<\/p>\n Sussing out the board\u2019s overall influence, though, is more complicated. The group says that between January of 2021 and May of 2024, it has sent a total of 266 recommendations to Meta. Of those, the company has fully or partially implemented 75, and reported \u201cprogress\u201d on 81. The rest have been declined, \u201comitted or reframed,\u201d or else Meta has claimed some level of implementation but hasn\u2019t offered proof to the board. (There are five recommendations currently awaiting a response.) Those numbers raise some questions about how much Meta is willing to change in response to the board it created.<\/p>\n Notably, the report has no criticism for Meta and offers no analysis of Meta\u2019s efforts (or lack thereof) to comply with its recommendations. The report calls out a case in which it recommended that Meta suspend the former prime minister <\/a> for six months, noting that it overturned the company\u2019s decision to leave up a video that could have incited violence. But the report makes no mention of the fact that Meta declined to suspend the former prime minister\u2019s account and declined to further clarify its rules for public figures.<\/p>\n The report also hints at thorny topics the board may take on in the coming months. It mentions that it wants to look at content \u201cdemotion,\u201d or what some Facebook and Instagram users may call \u201cshadowbans\u201d (the term is a loaded one for Meta, which has <\/a> denied that its algorithms intentionally punish users for no reason). \u201cOne area we are interested in exploring is demoted content, where a platform limits a post\u2019s visibility without telling the user,\u201d the Oversight Board writes.<\/p>\n For now, it\u2019s not clear exactly how the group could tackle the issue. The board\u2019s purview currently allows it to weigh in on specific pieces of content that Meta has removed or left up after a user appeal. But it\u2019s possible the board could find another way into the issue. A spokesperson for the Oversight Board notes that the group expressed concern about demoted content in its <\/a> on content related to the Israel-Hamas war. \u201cThis is something the board would like to further explore as Meta\u2019s decisions around demotion are pretty opaque,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n