Meta Tells Oversight Board It May End Funding After 2028, Sources Say

Meta has told members of its independent Oversight Board that the company may stop funding the body after 2028, Platformer reported, in a development that would effectively shut down the most prominent independent governance mechanism for the world's largest social network. Meta has already reduced funding to the board significantly this year and has signaled further cuts in 2027 and 2028, according to sources familiar with the situation. Staff members at the Oversight Board are bracing for another round of layoffs as a result. The Oversight Board was established in 2020 as an independent body with authority to review and overturn Meta's content moderation decisions. It was intended to provide an external check on how Meta enforces its platform policies and to give users an avenue for appeals beyond Meta's internal processes. Meta provided the board's endowment and operating budget while maintaining that the board functions independently. If Meta ends funding after 2028, it is unclear whether the board could continue operations through other means or would dissolve. The board's independence has always been complicated by the fact that Meta controls its financing, and critics have argued the arrangement was structurally inadequate as a genuine accountability mechanism. The potential defunding follows a broader shift in Meta's approach to content moderation. Earlier this year, the company announced it was scaling back its third-party fact-checking program in the United States, replacing it with a community-notes model similar to X. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has framed the changes as reducing political bias in enforcement. The Oversight Board did not comment on the funding discussions. Meta did not deny the Platformer report.