Trump decision still weighs on Facebook

Suppose you were Mark Zuckerberg, recently ordered by an advisory board to decide how long former President Donald Trump should stay banned from Facebook. How do you make that decision without alienating key constituencies — advertisers, shareholders, users, lawmakers and others — while staying true to your own sense of what Facebook should be?

It’s a hypothetical exercise, but one that illustrates the highwire act Facebook’s leadership now has to pull off.

Facebook’s quasi-independent oversight board last week said the company was justified in suspending Trump because of his role in inciting deadly violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. But it told Facebook to specify how long the suspension would last, saying that its “indefinite” ban on the former president was unreasonable.

The ruling, which gives Facebook six months to comply, effectively postpones any possible Trump reinstatement and puts the onus for that decision squarely back on the company — the exact scenario Zuckerberg was likely trying to avoid in the first place.

For years, he and other Facebook executives have insisted that Facebook should not be the “arbiter of truth” and that as a tech company it shouldn’t be making decisions on thorny societal matters such as free speech. Zuckerberg has stated publicly numerous times that he supports government regulation, although the rules Facebook wants aren’t always the same as those regulators might seek.

The company said this week it has no updates on its plans for Trump’s accounts beyond what it said last week, when it said it will review the board’s decision and “determine an action that is clear and proportionate.” It plans to respond to the board’s recommendations within 30 days of the decision.

Facebook has more than 2.7 billion users worldwide — most of them outside of the U.S. For most, Trump’s presence or absence on the platform is unlikely to greatly influence whether they should stay or they should go. Most people remain on Facebook even if they’re not entirely happy with it, studies show.

While some users are leaving Facebook — often citing the toxicity of political conversations and the platform’s broader actions against hate speech and misinformation — enough are staying (and joining) for the company to report rising user numbers quarter after quarter. For those who’ve left, even a decision to keep Trump off the platform forever is unlikely to make a difference.

Younger social media users are more likely to be liberal and, based on Pew Research studies, are more likely to use newer social media platforms that are still growing in the U.S. such as TikTok or Snapchat. In other words, if Facebook wants to keep expanding Instagram, its platform most popular with that demographic, banning Trump permanently is unlikely to hurt.

While many Americans might look to Facebook’s final decision as a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” on Trump, the approach the company takes could also affect its relationship with users around the world and their local and national political leaders, said David Kaye, a former United Nations special rapporteur on free speech.

“What kind of platform does Facebook want to present to the world?” asked Kaye, now a law professor at the University of California at Irvine. “A platform that cares about its users, cares about offline harm, and devotes resources to solving problems about offline harm? Or do they want to be known as the place that facilitates ethnic cleansing?”