The problem with Facebook is Facebook.

Prof. S. Vaidhyanathan correctly points out the… intrinsic contradiction in the recent announcement by Facebook that the company would create an oversight board that will “focus on the most challenging content issues for Facebook, including in areas such as hate speech, harassment, and protecting people’s safety and privacy. [That board] will make final and binding decisions on whether specific content should be allowed or removed from Facebook and Instagram (which Facebook owns)".

There are only three little problems with that board:

1. it cannot do anything that really matters, because “the problem with Facebook is Facebook”
2. even if it could, it would be American policing of worldwide public and private discourse
3. and even without the first two problems it could never be enough, because voluntary self-regulation of a for-profit-first company can never be enough

Plenty of concrete, worrying examples of all the three points above is in the complete article on Wired or, on this website, here and here, including explanations of why Facebook cannot check political ads, and why any proposal to “break Facebook up” is dangerously clueless. If you really want to solve those problems, demand SLOW social media, adversarial interoperability and personal clouds FOR THE MASSES.

(This post was drafted in May 2020, but only put online in August, because… my coronavirus reports, of course)