January 2023: New Judgment on FB Ban

Trump may be completely absent from social media right now, but he might come back (at least, on Facebook and Instagram) just in time for the 2024 US presidential election.

Facebook Will Rethink Trump’s Ban in Two Years

A new post to Facebook Newsroom shares that the platform’s ban of former US president Donald Trump will last for two years, effective from the date of the initial suspension (January 7).

At the end of this period, Facebook says it’ll consult with experts to help reassess whether “the risk to public safety has receded.” If it has, he’ll be welcome to return to the site. Otherwise, the ban will be extended.

When the suspension is eventually lifted, there will be a strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions that will be triggered if Mr. Trump commits further violations in future, up to and including permanent removal of his pages and accounts.

This is how Facebook says it’ll be handling the suspensions of politicians and other public figures moving forward. Policy violators may find themselves unable to post for a period as short as one month or as long as two years.

The length of Trump’s suspension, therefore, is an example of the maximum penalty. And unsurprisingly, the man himself is not happy about it. In a statement , Trump called this ruling an “insult.”

“When we assess content for newsworthiness, we will not treat content posted by politicians any differently from content posted by anyone else,” writes Nick Clegg, Facebook VP of Global Affairs.

Clegg continues by explaining that Facebook will apply the same “newsworthiness balancing test” to all content. The company will measure a post’s public interest value against the potential harm of leaving it up, and decide on what action to take based on which weighs more.

How We Got Here: A Timeline of Trump’s Facebook Ban

To understand why Facebook removed Trump from its social media platforms, we have to roll all the way back to the beginning of the year.

On January 6, a mob of Trump supporters stormed Capitol Hill in attempt to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat. The day after, Facebook and Instagram banned Trump indefinitely , following accusations that he incited the violence through his social media posts.

Although confident in its actions, Facebook then passed Trump’s case to its Oversight Board to review whether the company acted appropriately. After a bit of a delay, the Oversight Board ultimately ruled that the ban was justified —though its timeframe wasn’t.

Facebook was given six months to reassess Trump’s suspension, and yet it has already announced its its action plan after less than one. On top of that, Facebook has also responded to the Oversight Board’s 19 recommended policy changes.

Out of the board’s 19 recommendations, we are committed to fully implementing 15. We are implementing one recommendation in part, still assessing two recommendations, and taking no further action on one recommendation.

You can read Facebook’s response [PDF] in full on Facebook Newsroom.

Did Facebook Really Listen to the Oversight Board?

It may sound like Facebook did as the Oversight Board suggested, but if you take a step back and look at the situation…. you’ll find that nothing has changed.

Trump still can’t be on the platform for a good while, and it seems that Facebook can cut down or lengthen his ban at will (provided that enough time has passed since the last evaluation). In truth, Trump’s ban is still “indefinite.” Facebook’s just not using the word anymore.

Image Credit: Tia Dufour/Wikimedia Commons