Daniel Joyce: Meta's Oversight Board: A Critique (Seminar)

On Wednesday 17 July 2024, the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH) at Melbourne Law School, hosted a seminar chaired by IILAH Director, Professor Margaret Young, and presented by Associate Professor Daniel Joyce (UNSW Sydney). This episode explores the ways in which private actors like Facebook (now re-branded Meta) are responding to criticism by turning to human rights. These platforms have been enabled by a techno-libertarian form of freedom of expression and international law’s failure to capture economic dimensions such as monopoly and taxation in approaching questions of information governance. Responding to the resulting scandals, the platforms have sought to blend pre-existing self-governance structures with procedures and regulatory concepts drawn from international human rights law. For example, Meta’s Oversight Board now embraces a form of rights-based decision making in reviewing online content decisions. This episode examines the stakes involved for human rights and media governance when they become so associated with private power. To do so, this critique of the Oversight Board engages with aspects of Cornelia Vismann’s media theory including her approach to law as a cultural technique.