The first big test of Facebook’s oversight board is going to be the US election

 The board — which has the facility to overrule Mark Zuckerberg on content decisions — will begin as soon as mid-October.

Facebook’s much-anticipated independent oversight board — a gaggle which will be ready to overrule Facebook’s leaders, even CEO Mark Zuckerberg, about whether controversial posts should stay awake or be removed — announced its plans to start out making decisions on contested content by mid to late October. meaning the board could also be called on to form decisions about important Facebook posts associated with the US presidential election.

In recent months, some have criticized the long-awaited board for not moving quickly enough to affect issues around misinformation, hate speech, and extremism on the platform, and doubted whether it might be functional before the November election.

But as long as internal testing of its technical systems goes well, the board says it'll start accepting contested content cases around mid to late October. meaning that if President Trump or the other candidate declares a premature victory on Facebook on election night, the board could potentially combat that case and choose whether that post should stay awake or come down. While the board remains determining the precise criteria for a way it'll prioritize cases, it generally will combat “difficult, significant, and globally relevant” cases “that can inform future policy,” consistent with its website.

“The go-live date isn't connected to any specific case that the board is seeking or not seeking to require,” Facebook oversight board’s director of administration Thomas Hughes told Recode. “That said, the sort of case you only described [in which an official declares a premature election victory], would be in scope, and will be mentioned the board by Facebook, or potentially in time, mentioned by a user.”

Here’s how the board will work once it goes live: it'll take cases both from users and Facebook itself. Facebook the corporate can refer any quite contentious post to the board it wants an outdoor opinion on, and therefore the board will have 90 days (or 30 days if the case is expedited) to rule on the choice. For Facebook users, they will only attend the board if something they posted was taken down and that they want to dispute it. In later months, the board plans to expand its purview and permit users to request other people’s content to be taken down if they believe it violates Facebook’s policies against things like hate speech or harmful misinformation.

At a time when Facebook is being attacked by both Republicans and Democrats for a way it’s been handling politically contentious speech within the US, the board is supposed to feature oversight to the company’s decision-making. But it won’t solve the lion’s share of Facebook’s problems around the way to affect hate speech and misinformation. For one thing, the board will only take a little number of cases a year, likely “tens or hundreds” consistent with Hughes, out of the tens of thousands of annual cases that are expected to return it's away.

And it won’t be all about the US, either.

Facebook’s oversight board is formed from 20 lawyers, academics, journalists, and policy experts from everywhere the planet — collectively, its members speak 27 different languages and have lived in 29 different countries.

“The US election has a huge impact on the planet,” said Hughes, “But there'll be a quite broad range of things that the board I feel would be very keen to urge stuck into early .”

Facebook first floated the thought of an independent oversight board back in 2018, because it was facing scrutiny for its handling of Russian interference on the platform during the 2016 US election. Almost two years later, the board in January announced its governing rules, and in May announced its members.

Ruling on specific controversial posts is one thing, but getting Facebook to rethink its policies is another challenge. Some social media researchers have questioned the facility of the board to dictate Facebook’s policy, and the way much the corporation will hear its recommendations.

Now, the election could end up to be the primary big test of how impactful this oversight board will truly be in practice. Whether or not the board accepts a case associated with controversial election content may be a test in and of itself.