Reuters: Facebook Inc.’s board of directors confirmed the company’s suspension of former US President Donald Trump on Wednesday, but said the company had wrongly suspended the suspension indefinitely and given six months to provide a “reasonable response.” to determine. Trump called the decision and its ban across tech platforms “a total shame” and said companies would “pay a political price”.
The eagerly awaited verdict of the board of directors was checked for signals of how the world’s largest social media company will proceed against irregular political leaders in the future, a central area of controversy for online platforms.
The board, which was formed by Facebook to make a small fraction of its substantive decisions, said the company rightly banned Trump after the U.S. Capitol was stormed by pro-Trump supporters on Jan. 6.
However, Facebook inappropriately imposed a suspension with no clear standards and the company should set a response that is in line with the rules for other users of the platform. The company can determine that Trump’s account can be restored, temporarily blocked or permanently blocked.
“Indefinite penalties of this kind fail the international or American odor test for clarity, consistency and transparency,” said former federal judge Michael McConnell, co-chair of the Oversight Board, during a press conference following the publication of his decision on Wednesday.
In its ruling, the board said Facebook refused to answer some of the 46 questions asked, including how its newsfeed and other features affected the visibility of Trump’s posts and whether the company planned to investigate how its technology was doing Content reinforced as it had done in the events leading up to the siege of the Capitol.
The board said Facebook’s existing guidelines, such as: For example, deciding when material is too current to be removed needs to be communicated more clearly to users. It also called on Facebook to develop a policy that regulates how to deal with novel situations in which the existing rules would not be sufficient to prevent imminent damage.
Facebook blocked Trump’s access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely amid fears of further violent unrest following the January 6 riot. It was one of many social media sites that stopped the former president, including Twitter Inc, from banning him permanently.
“We will now review the decision of the board of directors and determine a clear and proportionate measure,” said Nick Clegg, Facebook vice president for global affairs and communications, in a blog post following the decision. “In the meantime, Mr. Trump’s accounts remain suspended.”
Trump called the move “an embarrassment for our country,” adding that “the President of the United States has been deprived of freedom of speech because radical left-wing madmen are afraid of the truth, but the truth will come out anyway, bigger and bigger stronger than never before. “
A board spokesman told Reuters that the decision had not been shared with Trump’s team prior to the announcement.
Tech platforms have grappled with the question of how to monitor world leaders and politicians who violate their guidelines for the past few years. Facebook has come under fire from both those who feel it should abandon its approach to political speech and those who viewed the Trump ban as a worrying act of censorship.
Several scholars and civil rights groups publicly urged the board to permanently block Trump while Republican lawmakers and some free speech advocates blew up the decision. Political leaders from Chancellor Angela Merkel to US Senator Bernie Sanders have expressed concern that private companies may silence elected officials at their locations.
At the time of the suspension, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg said in a post that “the risk that the president will continue to use our service during this time is simply too great”. The company later referred the case to its recently established board of directors, which includes academics, lawyers and legal activists, to decide whether to uphold the ban or restore Trump.
The binding verdict means Trump won’t be able to return to Facebook’s platforms for the time being, where he had a combined 59 million followers on Facebook and Instagram. According to democratic digital company Bully, its 2020 campaign spent about $ 160 million on Facebook ads from Pulpit Interactive’s campaign tracker.
On Tuesday, Trump launched a new website to share messages, which readers can then repost on their Facebook or Twitter accounts. A senior advisor said Trump also plans to launch his own social media platform.
The decision marks a milestone for the recently established board that Facebook funded with $ 130 million. The body has been hailed as a novel experiment by some researchers, but has been criticized by other critics who were skeptical of its independence or viewed it as a PR stunt to divert attention from the company’s more systemic problems.
“Today’s decision shows that the Facebook Oversight Board experiment failed,” said a group of scientists, experts and Facebook critics known as the Real Facebook Oversight Board. “This ruling is a desperate attempt to get it both ways by upholding Donald Trump’s” ban “without actually banning it while real decisions are being passed back to Facebook.”
Republican Kevin McCarthy, leader of the US minority, said in a tweet: “Facebook is more interested in acting like a democratic super-PAC than in a platform for free speech and open debate. If they can ban President Trump , all conservative voices could be next. ” A Republican majority in the House of Representatives will limit the great technical power over our speech. “
The Democratic Chairman of the House of Representatives, Steny Hoyer, welcomed the board’s decision. “Facebook is not the public space,” Hoyer said in a live interview with the Washington Post. “So you’ve made a decision and you don’t want to be able to convey this through your medium and I think you have the right to do that,” said Hoyer.
Hoyer said the impact of social media and tech companies has generated a lot of interest in Capitol Hill, and lawmakers plan to review outdated regulations for them. “We’re going to take a close look at this,” he said.
