Six of nine independent experts on the advisory board of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) resigned Monday, citing Meta Platforms' proposed overhaul of the group's oversight structure.
The mass departure follows a July email from Nell McCarthy, Meta's vice president of content policy, outlining plans to "refresh" the six-year-old committee's mandate. Under the changes, tech companies would select new advisory members instead of current members electing replacements. The committee would also lose the ability to evaluate GIFCT's performance or issue collective recommendations.
In their resignation letter, the departing advisers wrote: "A body that cannot scrutinise, take a position, or evaluate is not an advisory body at all. It is decoration and accountability theatre." They stated their objections to the plan were "ignored."
GIFCT, founded in 2017, operates as a consortium of major U.S. tech companies including Meta, Microsoft and YouTube. Its roughly 35 members share threat intelligence, alert each other to violent content and commission extremism research. The independent advisory committee has included government representatives from the U.S. U.K. Canada, the E.U. Netherlands and Australia.
Meta deferred comment to GIFCT. An unsigned statement from a GIFCT spokesperson said the proposed changes were "informed by several rounds of feedback" and remain under discussion. The statement framed the restructuring as improving "civil society and governments' substantive input," emphasizing that "multi-stakeholderism is a core principle."
The resignations expose a structural tension: tech companies control the consortium's operating board while independent advisers lacked enforcement power. A 2024 investigation found that GIFCT had not delivered on its counter-terrorism mandate, citing instances such as Meta's delay of TikTok's membership bid within the group.
