Facebook‘s independent Oversight Board on Wednesday announced that former President Donald Trump will remain banned from the company’s platform after a four-month suspension.
The decision is a victory for liberals and could set the tone for more censorship of political leaders on social media platforms.
Trump may yet be able to return to Facebook, though, because the Oversight Board said it was “not appropriate” for the platform to impose a permanent ban on his account. The social media giant now has six months to review Trump’s suspension once again to justify “a proportionate response that is consistent with the rules that are applied to other users of its platform,” the Oversight Board said in its decision Wednesday.
The Oversight Board asked Facebook to review its ban on Trump because it had applied a “vague, standardless penalty” when it first suspended him and then asked the Board to weigh in on the matter which was a way for the platform to “avoid its responsibilities,” the Board said.
The board said that “indefinite” or permanent suspensions on user accounts, such as Trump’s, are not part of the company’s content moderation policies. Furthermore, the board said it would reject Facebook’s request for it to support permanent restrictions to user accounts within Facebook’s current policy framework, which isn’t clear.
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Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram have been suspended indefinitely following his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The board found that the two key posts by Trump on Jan. 6 “severely violated” Facebook’s content moderation standards. Trump’s comments (We love you. You’re very special” in the first post and “great patriots” and “remember this day forever” in the second post) violated Facebook’s content rules prohibiting praise or support of people engaged in violence.
The board also found that Trump’s “unfounded” claims of fraud regarding the 2020 election and his persistent calls to action to change the result “created an environment where a serious risk of violence was possible.”
Trump’s Facebook posts created a risk of harm and his words of support for those involved in the Capitol riots “legitimized their violent actions,” the board said, given Trump’s high level of influence on Facebook and Instagram. Trump had 35 million followers on Facebook and 24 million on Instagram on Jan. 6.
In late January, Facebook decided to refer Trump’s ban to its Oversight Board to reconsider if it had made the right decision in suspending his posting privileges.
The Oversight Board was announced in 2018 by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a separate entity that would help the social media giant handle thorny decisions involving content moderation.
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The board is made up of 20 members from a wide variety of relevant backgrounds in media, law, human rights, and international policy. The board started its operations in October 2020 and issued its first ruling in January 2021, overturning Facebook on four of the first five content decisions it was asked to make.
