Facebook’s oversight board on Wednesday upheld the social media giant’s decision to suspend President Donald Trump in the final days of his presidency. However, the board also required Facebook to justify the indefinite nature of the ban, and left the door open to Trump returning to the platform in the future.
“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,” the Oversight Board wrote in its ruling. “However, it was not appropriate for Facebook to impose an ‘indefinite’ suspension.”
The board added that “It is not permissible for Facebook to keep a user off the platform for an undefined period, with no criteria for when or whether the account will be restored.”
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So, “within six months of this decision, Facebook must reexamine the arbitrary penalty it imposed on January 7 and decide the appropriate penalty. … If Facebook decides to restore Mr. Trump’s accounts, the company should apply its rules to that decision, including any changes made in response to the Board’s policy recommendations below. In this scenario, Facebook must address any further violations promptly and in accordance with its established content policies.”
Trump was suspended indefinitely from the site (and permanently banned from Twitter) after he posted messages encouraging his supporters to storm the Capitol during Congress’ confirmation of Joe Biden as the next president.
At the time, Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post, “Over the last several years, we have allowed President Trump to use our platform consistent with our own rules, at times removing content or labeling his posts when they violate our policies. We did this because we believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.”
Amid concerns that tech giants are too powerful when it comes to the dissemination of speech online, Facebook in May 2020 announced the creation of its oversight board. It’s an independent, global contingent of 20 people, largely academics, and will eventually double in size. Its directive is to determine if Facebook and Instagram content is consistent with the companies’ policies and values and, according to the announcement, it is committed to “upholding freedom of expression within the framework of international norms of human rights.”
Facebook has agreed to abide by its decisions “unless implementation could violate the law.”
