Jamal Greene: evaluation

Transcript context

…You’re one of the leaders on the Facebook Oversight Board. What is the optimal correlation between the content moderation policies of different social networks? Some people worry. It’s okay if Facebook takes someone off the platform — not the company Meta, but the Facebook page — but if Twitter and YouTube do the same thing at the same time, then people start getting worried. So, should individual social media companies consider the interdependencies here, or just each act separately? Well, I think it depends on the content. Generally speaking, yes — I won’t speak for the oversight board; I’ll just speak for myself — generally speaking, yes. I do think that one should generally be concerned with whether the market for users is a competitive market or not. If Facebook is the only game in town, as it is in many countries, I think one is right to be more concerned about its content moderation practices under those circumstances than under circumstances of genuine competition. It would then follow that if all the companies are doing the same thing, whether or not they’re coordinating their behavior, one should be more worried about that. It’s hard to be abstract about that because some content comes down because there’s good reason to take it down. Facebook is a big player in the market. You don’t have to think it’s either collusion or that Facebook is a monopoly, but it’s just like, if one employer fires you, a lot of others will be reluctant to hire you. They’ll think, “Oh, something went wrong.” If Facebook takes down a content poster, then Twitter and YouTube must think, “Well, Facebook looked into this. Facebook even has this oversight board, a lot of smart people on it, a lot of diverse points of view.” Shouldn’t that make you much more reluctant to argue for something not being on Facebook?…

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