Facebook Oversight Board upholds former President Trump’s ban

Share this post

Photo via The boston globe

Facebook’s Oversight Board on Wednesday upheld the company’s decision to block former President Donald Trump from its platforms.

The ruling means Trump will continue to be blocked from Facebook and Instagram. But the board said an indefinite suspension of Trump’s account was inappropriate and the company has six months to lay out new penalties.

“However, it was not appropriate for Facebook to impose the indeterminate and standardless penalty of indefinite suspension,” the board said in a statement explaining its decision. “Facebook’s normal penalties include removing the violating content, imposing a time-bound period of suspension, or permanently disabling the page and account.”

Facebook has 30 days to respond publicly, according to the Oversight Board’s rules.
The board found that two of Trump’s posts on January 6 “violated Facebook’s rules prohibiting praise or support of people engaged in violence.” The violating posts, the board said, included referring to “great patriots” and calls to “remember this day forever.”

“At the time of Mr. Trump’s posts, there was a clear, immediate risk of harm and his words of support for those involved in the riots legitimized their violent actions,” the board said Wednesday. “Given the seriousness of the violations and the ongoing risk of violence, Facebook was justified in suspending Mr. Trump’s accounts on January 6 and extending that suspension on January 7.”

However, that suspension should not be indefinite, the board said. Facebook should come to a decision within six months on whether Trump will be permanently banned or if another penalty is appropriate.

The board could have made that decision itself, according to CNN. But by choosing to hand the decision back to Facebook it once again puts Zuckerberg’s powerful role in overseeing public discourse in the United States in the spotlight, along with the arbitrary nature of how Facebook moderates it platform.

Reacting to Facebook’s decision to extend his ban, the former president said:

“What Facebook, Twitter, and Google have done is a total disgrace and an embarrassment to our Country. Free Speech has been taken away from the President of the United States because the Radical Left Lunatics are afraid of the truth, but the truth will come out anyway, bigger and stronger than ever before,” Trump said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.

“The People of our Country will not stand for it! These corrupt social media companies must pay a political price, and must never again be allowed to destroy and decimate our Electoral Process.”

Meanwhile, the former president launched a WordPress blog. site on Tuesday “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump”