Meta Platforms has pledged additional funds for its independent Oversight Board that will last until 2028, the board said Thursday. The company’s revelation follows a growing trend of social media platforms being held under pressure to tackle misinformation, amid their efforts to use artificial intelligence to help manage the content on their websites. The board’s operations will be funded by the extra funds in a trust, Paolo Carozza, the board’s co chair, said. Over time, said Carozza, “Meta has been responsive to the board’s recommendations on policy and is actively engaged in referring complex content moderation cases to the board.”
The board didn’t provide details of this latest round, but a prior blog from the watchdog suggested a minimum investment of at least 30m dollars for each of the three years of 2024. The new financial commitment continues that support through 2028, ensuring the Oversight Board will have more time to run without endangering their budget. It’s a subtle sign of confidence, but it is important for any who have been watching the development of content moderation. With the speed of the change in platform policies after significant political or social events, I have seen steady funding for independent review as one of the few consistent pillars in this very volatile area.
The Oversight Board is made up of legal, journalistic and human rights professionals. It decides on individual cases when there is a disagreement over content on Facebook, Instagram or other platforms that the company controls, and gives more general guidance on how the company should manage problematic content on these platforms. The board issued a scathing letter of rebuke to the company in April 2025. It alleged that Meta rushed to shut its fact checking unit in the United States and relaxed curbs on potentially sensitive topics like immigration, gender identity, and others. The criticism was striking in that it demonstrated the board was prepared to make its voice heard, not merely rubberstamp its actions, publicly.
Those policy rollbacks were started by the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, in January 2025. He at the time stated that “too much censorship had occurred” as a result of previous attempts to moderate. The phrase has been commonplace in tech discourse for a while now, particularly as politicians from both sides claim bias against platforms. But Zuckerberg’s move was more likely to appease users who were feeling over-moderated, and it sparked immediate concerns from civil rights groups and election integrity advocates. The Oversight Board’s pointed April report indicated that Meta’s independent watchdog, chosen by its own company, didn’t think the modifications were sufficiently well thought out or timed.
The good news is that in the bigger picture there’s both good news and bad news here. The good news is that Meta is continuing to invest money in the future, at least until 2028. That’s not zero. The board’s willingness to go public with its criticism of Meta also indicates some degree of independence — a point long made by many critics who have long assumed that corporate-funded oversight can never be truly independent. The board has also dealt with hundreds of challenging issues of hate speech, misinformation and political manipulation, as this was something that most academics or government committees may never encounter in the real world.
