May 5, 2021- 8:10 p.m.
Facebook’s ban on former President Trump’s account will continue following a decision issued by its independent oversight board Wednesday.
Trump has been suspended from the platform since earlier this year on the basis of posts made surrounding the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6. The board’s ruling is binding, and Facebook has seven days to enforce it.
The decision will leave Trump with limited ways to reach the public in the same way he did while president.
Trump has been issuing statements to the press via email, and while many of them have been shared on social media widely, his reach and dominance over news cycles has clearly diminished.
The former president launched a feature on his personal website Tuesday that essentially amounts to a blog that would let his dedicated fans disseminate short posts to the social media sites that had banned him.
Unlike Facebook’s delayed decision on whether to reinstate Trump’s accounts, other social media platforms including Twitter permanently banned his account shortly after the posts about the insurrection.
The decision is the most consequential ruling the academics, former politicians, legal experts and journalists that make up the oversight board have weighed in on since Facebook launched the independent body.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to leave the fate of Trump’s Facebook account up to the Oversight Board drew widespread criticism from tech critics on the right and left.
“The real concern is not Facebook’s Trump decision but the way in which this powerful corporation is attempting to dodge accountability by engaging in covert influence schemes to shape public opinion and policy.
The board has 20 members, and will be doubled in size when fully staffed. Facebook made an initial commitment of $130 million for a trust to cover operation costs of the board, but the board has its own staff independent from the social media giant.
The Real Facebook Oversight Board, a group of tech advocates that formed after the launch of the Oversight Board, slammed Facebook’s referral of the decision to the Oversight Board as a “PR stunt.” “Obviously Donald Trump has violated Facebook’s terms of service repeatedly, incited hate, spread disinformation, fomented violence and been used as a model for other authoritarian leaders to abuse Facebook.
He should be banned forever,” the group said in a statement before the ruling was issued.
“But do not let Facebook’s Oversight Board distract from the need to ensure real accountability for hate speech, election lies, disinformation and other harmful content,” they continued.Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who led efforts to challenge election results ahead of the insurrection at the Capitol, also dismissed the oversight process.”
I don’t think any one company should have this kind of power over speech, over data, over news and information.
Facebook has tremendous power. I have no idea, of course, what the decision of their oversight board will be and I think what it is is less important than the sheer amount of power they exercise and, of course, the total lack of transparency,” Hawley said during a Washington Post Live event on Tuesday.
But Adam Kovacevich, executive director of Chamber of Progress, a coalition representing tech giants including Facebook, said the Oversight Board process allowed more voices to weigh in on the decision.
