Facebook Inc.’s much-anticipated oversight board will get into action soon and its members will be announced in the “coming months,” the company said today.

In a press release, Facebook said Thomas Hughes, a digital rights advocate and former executive director for the British human rights group Article 19, will become the director of oversight board administration. Other board members as well as staff will be announced in the next few months.

The board will be made up of 40 members, although Brent Harris, Facebook’s head of governance and global affairs, said right now there are a “few dozen” candidates. He said those chosen for the position will come from a diversity of backgrounds and have differing opinions about Facebook.

It will make decisions on certain content on Facebook and Instagram deemed problematic, and it will be able to overrule decisions made by Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg. The first cases will be reviewed in the summer.

“Cases will initially only involve individual pieces of content that we have taken down, and will be referred to the board through two avenues,” said Facebook. “First, anyone who disagrees with the outcome of Facebook’s decision to take down their content on Instagram or Facebook, and has exhausted appeals, will have 15 days to submit an appeal to the board. Second, Facebook itself will be able to directly refer significant and difficult cases.”

In the near future, the board will also see cases in which Facebook didn’t remove a piece of content. If the board then decides Facebook made the wrong decision, that content could be removed. Not all decisions the board makes will be adopted if those decisions breach local laws or the company’s privacy policies.

Facebook said all cases should be reviewed within 90 days, although in certain cases that have “real-world implications,” Facebook said there’s a mechanism in place for expedited review.

Those decisions, said Facebook, could potentially result in wider policy changes in the future. If the board recommends such a policy change, this then go through various channels to assess its feasibility. “Some recommendations may involve only minor modifications to current policies or practices, while others may involve more substantial or complex changes,” the company said.

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