Facebook appears to be taking steps in the right direction as the social network plans to give its community of 350 million users to keep a check on the crowd connected via the social network. While using its users is nothing new, but giving the same users a chance to actively monitor the network. Sounds interesting and quite a positive move from Facebook.
The social network is presently testing Facebook Community Council and as the name suggests would be made up of Facebook users. The purpose? Well for the first time in ages Facebook is actually taking initiatives to put out a more democratic image of itself as it gives users more powers to administer the community. Now isn’t that taking the step beyond and making users have a sense of ownership of the platform and get actively involved in administering (in some manner) the site as Facebook expands into an ever larger network; for which the task of monitoring becomes an impossible task for its workforce of a thousand employees.
So why now?
As I said above, the idea is primarily to make it easy for the administrators and monitoring teams on Facebook to stay updated on any offensive material on the site. Be it violence, porn, personal attacks, etc that require a prompt action to be taken against them. Many a times such content might just slip by since these may remain unreported and slip administrators’ eyes. Take for example this hate group that bravely claims to Murder President Obama and it continues to expand. I bet admin hasn’t really taken notice of it, welcome FCC and all this might just end the moment such a thing is born on Facebook.
The concept sounds pretty nice and users will really be glad that they would be acting as the middlemen in administering the site. The FCC will exist as an app and its users will be allowed to flag content that violates Facebook’s terms of use. However they could only take such action on personal attacks if they are bound to strike celebrities or public figures.
The Complications?
There are a whole lot of those. Primarily a particular group would hate one thought and make a group for that while the other may have all the reasons to admire them. This is where the biggest trouble rises and one would see a great divide amongst users, deeming the whole concept of Community powered administration to be put to test. Of course the final decision will be from Facebook team but that is what makes the whole thing more difficult for the admin on Facebook as it will have to take actions very carefully and whatever the consequences of it are, Facebook alone will be responsible.
While the whole idea is wonderful, it isn’t that simple to apply and implement given the fact how populated and diverse is the Facebook community. The Facebook Community Council at present is Invite Only and is currently in test mode. Lets see how it turns out and the controversies it gives rise to when a first offensive site is reported by the community.
