Facebook: Trump ban could expire in 2023
Facebook has set a potential time limit on its previously indefinite ban of Donald Trump: two years.
Responding to a mandate from a semi-independent oversight committee that reviews its content moderation and policy enforcement decisions, the company said the former U.S. president will be eligible to resume posting to his Facebook and Instagram accounts on Jan. 7, 2023, two years after riots at the U.S. Capitol.
The timing means Mr. Trump could regain his social media megaphone in time for the 2024 presidential campaign, if the company decides to reinstate him.
“At the end of this period, we will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded,” wrote Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, in a post announcing the decision. “We will evaluate external factors, including instances of violence, restrictions on peaceful assembly and other markers of civil unrest. If we determine that there is still a serious risk to public safety, we will extend the restriction for a set period of time and continue to reevaluate until that risk has receded.”
In the event the ban is lifted, Mr. Clegg added, “there will be a strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions that will be triggered if Mr. Trump commits further violations ... up to and including permanent removal.”
The Guardian reported that Mr. Trump responded with a statement saying, “Facebook’s ruling is an insult to the recordsetting 75m people, plus many others, who voted for us in the 2020 Rigged Presidential Election. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing, and ultimately, we will win. Our Country can’t take this abuse anymore!”
In an additional statement, Mr.
Trump alluded to a 2024 presidential run.
“Next time I’m in the White House there will be no more dinners, at his request, with Mark Zuckerberg and his wife,” he said. “It will be all business!”
Facebook also announced that it has implemented new moderation policies “to be applied in exceptional cases such as this,” suggesting that the verdict in this case could serve as a template for future decisions.
The social media company’s announcement comes just under a month after the company’s Oversight Board — a cohort of 20 scholars, lawyers, journalists and advocates tasked with reviewing and issuing binding decisions on some of Facebook’s toughest content moderation decisions — said that the open-ended suspension Mr. Trump had initially been given was inconsistent with “the rules that are applied to other users.”
“It was not appropriate for Facebook to impose the indeterminate and standardless penalty of indefinite suspension,” the board said at the time. “Facebook’s normal penalties include removing the violating content, imposing a time-bound period of suspension, or permanently disabling the page and account.”
It’s that middle option — a “time-bound period of suspension” — that Facebook has now opted for, doing so well within the six-month deadline that the board gave the company.
After years of debate around how and when social media platforms should factcheck posts, take down content and ban users, including heads of state, Mr. Trump’s two-year ban is a signal from Facebook that the company stands by its initial January decision to silence Mr. Trump for his role in the Capitol riots.
But it’s also another example of the company’s hesitancy to make any permanent decision on the matter. After referring its initial ban to the Oversight Board for confirmation or veto, Facebook has now hedged its bets once again.
That has left the company’s biggest critics unsatisfied.
“While many people will breathe a sigh of relief today that Facebook has banned
Donald Trump for a further two years, this decision only goes to underline the enormous, unchecked power of Facebook and its repeated failure to police its platform,” wrote The Real Facebook Oversight Board, a watchdog group that tends to be critical of Facebook’s moderation policies. “Trump and his allies used Facebook to incite an insurrection and attempted coup of the United States Government. The punishment: Back on Facebook just in time for Trump 2024.”
The choice amounts to “a two year time- out,” the group added on Twitter.
Other organizations were similarly critical. “That Facebook won’t just ban Trump already is alarming,” Media Matters for America President Angelo Carusone said in a statement. Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, wrote that “it’s telling and disappointing that the company has mainly rejected the proposal — made by the Oversight Board as well as the Knight Institute — that it commission an independent study of how its platform contributed to the events of January 6.”