Today the Oversight Board announced that it has accepted its first policy advisory opinion referral from Facebook. You can read more about it in our Transparency Center.

We can ask the board to provide us recommendations about how we can improve our policies, especially those that are significant and difficult, by requesting a policy advisory opinion. In this instance, we asked the board for recommendations about the right level of privacy for residential information. In this instance, we asked the board for recommendations about our policy on Privacy Violations and Image Privacy Rights.

While not binding, the board’s guidance on our policies is a critical input into our policy development process. This process includes our Policy Forum where we convene subject experts from around the world to discuss potential changes to our Community Standards, ads policies, and major News Feed ranking changes. We publicly share minutes for these meetings to provide public insight into these discussions and iterations.

Once the board publishes its policy advisory opinion, as stipulated in the bylaws, we will take 30 days to review and publicly respond. The policy advisory opinion process differs from our normal case process because we are asking for the board’s input about a policy instead of a specific piece of content.

Through policy advisory opinions, the board will shape the development and enforcement of the policies that apply to more than 3 billion people across our apps. We thank the board for their continued thoughtful consideration of some of the most significant and difficult questions regarding our policies.