The Facebook Oversight Board has called for the suspension on the Facebook account of former US President Donald Trump to be revaluated.
Trump was indefinitely suspended on January 7 over posts made on the account related to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by the then-president’s supporters, during which five people died. He was forbidden from posting on either his Facebook or Instagram profiles, with no time limit applied.
According to Facebook, Trump’s posts included terms that violated Facebook’s rules prohibiting praise or support of people engaged in violence. The decision to suspend him due to the posts was affirmed by the Oversight Board.
“The Board found that, in maintaining an unfounded narrative of electoral fraud and persistent calls to action, Mr. Trump created an environment where a serious risk of violence was possible,” a board statement said.
“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.”
While the committee upheld the ban, it ruled that Facebook was wrong to apply an indefinite ban on Trump, ruling instead that it should apply a defined penalty.
“In applying a vague, standardless penalty and then referring this case to the Board to resolve, Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities,” the board statement said.
The board has called for Facebook to review the case and apply a new response in line with similar cases for other accounts within six months. Normally, Facebook would remove any content in violation of its terms of service, suspend the account for a defined time period, or permanently disable the page and account.
“A minority of the Board emphasized that Facebook should take steps to prevent the repetition of adverse human rights impacts and ensure that users who seek reinstatement after suspension recognize their wrongdoing and commit to observing the rules in the future,” the statement added.
However, non-profit organisation All the Citizens’ Real Facebook Oversight Board, which aims to monitor the effect Facebook has on democracy, has called for Facebook to uphold the permanent ban on Trump.
In a statement, the group said: “Today’s decision shows that the Facebook Oversight Board experiment has failed. This verdict is a desperate attempt to have it both ways, upholding the “ban” of Donald Trump without actually banning him, while punting any real decisions back to Facebook.”
We urge Oversight Board members to step down for their own dignity. And we call for regulation of Facebook and transparent, consistent, independent oversight of Facebook content – including an actual policy for banning users. 9/
— The Real Facebook Oversight Board (@FBoversight) May 5, 2021
The Facebook Oversight Board was created as an independent body to review decisions made by the social media giant. It consists of 20 people, coming from various backgrounds, including academics, journalists, politicians, and charity workers.
In addition to upholding the ban, the board made a number of other recommendations to Facebook. These include escalating political content from influential users to specialised staff and dedicating resources to assess risks of harm from influential accounts.
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Trump continues to make false claims that he won the 2020 US presidential election. A statement from Trump, through his Save America group, from May 3rd, said: “The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 will be, from this day forth, known as THE BIG LIE!”
Having been deplatformed by Facebook and Twitter, Trump also recently launched his own website to voice his opinions. He has used it to attack his opponents, including Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump.
The website also comes with the option to share Trump’s posts to Facebook and Twitter.
Not only did deplatforming Trump remove a powerful tool for him to dictate media coverage, it cut off a key source of fake news. Analytics firm Zignal Labs claimed that online misinformation about election fraud fell 73% in the week or so following his removal from Facebook and Twitter.
However, the move has also brought large tech companies under scrutiny over the powers they possess and how they use them. Conservative commentators have routinely claimed that large tech companies and social media platforms are censoring right-wing opinions.
Politicians in Florida are looking to make it the first US state to ban social media companies from removing politicians from their sites.