Six of Nine GIFCT Advisers Resign Over Meta Oversight Rewrite

Six of the nine independent advisers on the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism's oversight committee resigned Monday, according to a letter seen by Wired. Their appeals against a Meta-led restructure had, they wrote, been "ignored."

The trigger was a July email from Nell McCarthy, Meta's vice president of content policy, laying out plans to "refresh" the six-year-old committee's mandate. Under her proposal, new additions to the rotating advisory committee would be picked by tech companies rather than elected by current members. The committee would also be barred from weighing in on the consortium's performance or making recommendations together as a group.

"A body that cannot scrutinise, take a position, or evaluate is not an advisory body at all," the departing advisers wrote. "It is decoration and accountability theatre."

The resigning members said they had "lost confidence in the GIFCT's ability to deliver effectively on its founding mission" of preventing terrorists from exploiting online services. GIFCT was set up in 2017 by Meta, Microsoft and YouTube and now includes roughly 35 member companies; Meta currently chairs its operating board. The walkout adds to a heavy run of platform-governance stories in our regulation coverage this quarter, as external oversight of Big Tech content decisions keeps thinning out from the inside.