Institutional Metaphors and the Meta Oversight Board

By: Tao Huang

The Meta Oversight Board represents a significant

institutional innovation in the governance of social media. It

offers valuable insights and lessons for regulating content

moderation practices on online platforms. Scholars and

commentators have employed a variety of metaphors to

describe the board: court, human rights tribunal,

administrative law judge, arbitration panel, and internal

self-regulation mechanism. These metaphors serve as both

rhetorical devices and analytical tools, illuminating not only

epistemic understandings of the board but also normative

expectations surrounding its role. Adopting metaphors as a

methodological lens, this Article examines and compares five

prominent metaphors used to characterize the board. This

analysis reveals several tensions embedded in its design: (1)

the high demand for dispute resolution versus the limited

supply of caseloads, (2) the private ordering of contractual

obligations versus the public significance of fundamental

rights, (3) its role as a law-enforcer for Meta versus a law-

maker for the whole digital public square, (4) its function in

resolving disputes versus issuing advisory opinions, and (5)

its aspiration for oversight and independence versus its

reliance on Meta for operational support. Building on these

findings, this Article proposes reforms to address these

tensions and enhance the board’s design. The metaphors,

tensions, and reform proposals discussed here not only shed

light on the future evolution of the board but also contribute

to the broader discourse on the governance of online

platforms.