Facebook’s newly announced 20-member oversight board to focus on issues of hate speech and harassment includes Pamela Karlan, the Stanford Law professor who was lambasted earlier this year for her crude remark about President Trump’s then-13-year-old son Barron while she testified at the House impeachment hearings.
In December, Karlan sat on a panel of four constitutional scholars who served as expert witnesses on the law as the House of Representatives debated whether to send articles of impeachment to the Senate. Three of the four identified as liberal, Karlan included.
“Contrary to what President Trump has said, Article 2 [of the Constitution] does not give him the power to do anything he wants. The Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility, so while the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron,” Karlan said in her now-viral remarks.
Karlan’s testimony garnered her less attention than her remarks about Barron, which resulted in first lady Melania Trump defending her son and condemning the law professor.
“A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics,” the first lady wrote on Twitter.
“Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it,” the tweet continued.
Toward the end of the hearing, Karlan apologized for the mention of Barron.
“I want to apologize for mentioning the president’s son, it was wrong for me to do that,” she said.
Facebook describes Karlan on the oversight board’s website as having a background in three areas: voting and the political process, constitutional law and the law of democracy.
The social media giant has faced years of criticism for its handling of abusive content and misinformation, including allegations of political bias and censorship of conservative media outlets, something the company has denied.
As for if the oversight board will have credibility to the public, Facebook’s head of global affairs Nick Clegg told Reuters that the board would earn that over time.
“I don’t expect people to say, ‘Oh hallelujah, these are great people, this is going to be a great success’ — there’s no reason anyone should believe that this is going to be a great success until it really starts hearing difficult cases in the months and indeed years to come,” he said.
The board will be set up as a Supreme Court-style and eventually hopes to expand to 40 members. It also hopes to have authority outside of Facebook.
Facebook formed a separate legal trust with an $130 million investment, but is allowing the trust to accept funding from other sources and form new companies. This system, according to Protocol, ensures that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg would not have the ability to shut the board down if he disagreed with their rulings.
The problem, however, is that the trust could then one day spin off new oversight boards for other social media giants like Google, Twitter and others.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a staunch critic of big tech, argued that the move further proves his belief that Facebook should be broken up.
“This is how powerful @Facebook is, how much speech it controls, how much of our time & attention it claims: it now has a special censorship committee to decide what speech can stay & what should go. Facebook basically making the case it should be broken up,” he tweeted Wednesday.