Welcome to the Facebook "Supreme Court"

Facebook’s privacy issues are more extensive than previously thought

On Friday, Facebook revealed that it had suspended tens of thousands of apps for inappropriately absorbing users' personal information. The actions confirm that the scale of Facebook's data privacy issues was far more extensive than previously acknowledged.

Facebook says that its investigation began in March last year, after signs that Cambridge Analytica had retrieved and used people’s Facebook information without their consent. In August last year, Facebook suspended 400 apps, but in this latest raid, “tens of thousands” of apps associated with about 400 developers have been suspended.

When a state court in Boston later unsealed court filings part of an investigation by the Massachusetts attorney general, documents revealed that Facebook had suspended 69,000 apps. The majority of the terminated apps were due to developers not cooperating with Facebook’s investigation. However, 10,000 may have been misusing personal data from Facebook users.

Also, they’re planning to launch their own “supreme court”

Facebook has revealed its plan to create an independent “oversight” board to oversee decisions about moderating content on the platform. The board will have the power to override Facebook's decisions on contentious material, and it will influence new policy.

The Facebook “supreme court” will launch with at least 11 members — and will eventually involve 40 people around the world (less than the number of markets where Facebook operates). The panel will hear its first “cases” in 2020.

The initiative is primarily written off as grandstanding. Mark Zuckerberg wrote: “I don’t believe private companies like ours should be making so many important decisions about speech on our own.” But still, he keeps refusing to answer questions about his business’s impact on democracy and human rights when asked by parliaments around the world.

Most experts are also questioning the board’s independence and the motivation behind the move. “Facebook’s ‘supreme court’ invokes all the pomp and circumstance of actual judicial practice without any of the responsibility to citizens,” said Bernie Hogan, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, to the BBC.

YouTube rolls back changes after upsetting the creator community

YouTube announced changes to its verification system ,  telling a large number of high-profile YouTubers that they would no longer be verified and lose their checkmarks. In an email to some creators, YouTube wrote: “We’re writing to let you know that we’re updating the eligibility criteria for channel verification on YouTube.”

The affected creators protested so loudly against the changes that YouTube reversed its decision. For a long time, any YouTube channel with more than 100,000 subscribers could apply for verification. Now, the channel proposed that only channels representing a creator, artist, public figure or company that is “widely recognised” outside YouTube should be able to get verified.

The verification badge is prestigious for any YouTuber, as it signals that the platform “supported” their efforts. But creators also worried that changes would affect both their view counts and their ability to work with brands. Verification sometimes affects where videos appear in search results, and it’s also helpful to fans trying to identify a YouTuber’s official channel.