Critics of Facebook Inc.  including the organizers of an advertising boycott against the company launched their own oversight board to review the company's content moderation practices. The launch comes a day after Facebook’s officially-mandated Oversight Board said it would start work in mid-late October, nearly a year behind schedule.

The new group, which bills itself as the “Real Facebook Oversight Board,” counts among its initial members the heads of three U.S. civil rights groups, the former president of Estonia and the former head of election integrity at Facebook.

The Real Facebook Oversight Board, which consists of academics, journalists and activists, will conduct its deliberations in public. The rival board was unveiled in a tweet by Carole Cadwalladr, the journalist who broke the Cambridge Analytica story about the scraping of data that was used for ad targeting in the 2016 presidential election.

On its website, the shadow board complains the official board has taken too long to set up and that its mandate is limited. It also worries that the 90 days potentially needed to reach decisions isn't fast enough to address the "urgent risks" Facebook may present to the upcoming election.

"We're not waiting for another election to go wrong," the shadow oversight board says on its website. "We believe accountability in real time is vital." 

A Facebook spokesperson said the official oversight board required time to vet members, develop a process for submitting appeals and create a secure technology for the members to use when discussing decisions.

"We ran a year-long global consultation to set up the Oversight Board as a long-lasting institution that will provide binding, independent oversight over some of our hardest content decisions. The members were selected for their deep experience in a diverse range of issues," the spokesperson said in a statement. "This new effort is mostly longtime critics creating a new channel for existing criticisms."

Facebook “responds to criticism with bad faith statements and cosmetic changes,” said board member Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook who turned critical of its leaders over their handling of misuse of the platform in the 2016 election.

“The Real Oversight Board will act as a watchdog, helping policymakers and consumers defend against a renegade platform.”

The new group said it was being funded by Luminate, a philanthropy backed by The Omidyar Group, but did not disclose a funding amount.

Source- Reuters