The Meta Board will now also hear complaints from Threads users

The Meta Supervisory Board is expanding its scope to include topics. The group announced that Threads users will now be able to appeal Meta’s content moderation decisions, giving the independent group the ability to influence policies for Meta’s latest app.

This is a notable expansion for the Supervisory Board, which has until now dealt with content moderation issues related to posts on Facebook and Instagram. “Having independent accountability early on for a new app like Threads is vital,” board co-chair Helle Thorning-Schmidt said in a statement.

According to the Supervisory Board, user appeals on Threads will function similarly to what they do on Instagram and Facebook. When users have “exhausted” Meta’s internal process, they will be able to request a review from the Board of Supervisors. According to the rules established in the formation of the management board, Meta is obliged to implement the decisions of the management board with respect to specific positions, but it is not obliged to adhere to its policy recommendations.

The addition of Threads’ content moderation to the board’s scope underscores the growing influence of the Twitter-like app, which launched last summer. Threads has already grown to 130 million users and Mark Zuckerberg that one day it may reach a billion users.

Officially, Threads has the same rules as Instagram. But Meta has already faced some pushback from users over its content recommendation policies. The threads are currently searching for words related to COVID-19 and other “potentially sensitive” topics. The company also raised some eyebrows when it said last week that it would not recommend accounts that post too much unless users opt-in to such offers.

Regardless of whether the board ultimately weighs in on these choices, it will likely be some time before Threads users see any changes as a result of the board’s recommendations. The Board accepts only a small fraction of user appeals, and it can take several weeks or months for the group to make a decision, and many more months for Meta to change any of its rules as a result of the guidelines. (The board may, in some cases, the process.)