“It was not appropriate for Facebook to impose the indefinite sanction without indefinite suspension standard,” the decision reads. Facebook must examine the issue itself, the board wrote, and “determine and justify a proportionate response that is consistent with the rules that are applied to other users of its platform.” The board has set a six-month deadline from now, by which time we’ll undoubtedly have another round of news about Trump’s social media presence.
For years, Trump was at the center of an attention loop that was both overwhelmingly consistent and meaningless; a head of state was using his personal Twitter account to amplify extremist content, manipulate public attention, retweet stupid memes, promote dangerous conspiracy theories and speak directly to followers, who in the end were willing to do so. storm the Capitol in an attempt to overturn an election they mistakenly believed was stolen.
For years, companies like Facebook and Twitter have refrained from interfering with Trump’s social media posts, saying their “media worth” should protect him even when he breaks the platform’s rules on social media. abuse or misinformation. That started to change during the covid pandemic, as Trump used his platform to repeatedly spread misinformation about voting and the virus. Over the summer, Twitter began adding “fact checks” to Trump’s rule-breaking tweets, which infuriated the president so much that he threatened to abolish Section 230, the rule that protects. many internet companies take all responsibility for what users do on their services.
But even if Trump forever remains off major social media platforms, the cycle is set. Trump will continue to publish statements, and they will be shared by his supporters and covered by the media, whether or not he is on social media. And the cycle of networked attention that has circled around him for so long will continue without him, as will the underlying structures that make Trump’s influential social media presence possible.
It’s the “worst case scenario for Facebook, which put this thing together.”
Joan Donovan, Harvard Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
Banning Trump from Facebook permanently would keep him out of those networks. But focusing so much attention on the platform’s decisions themselves is extremely misguided, says Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor at Syracuse University who studies media literacy and disinformation. Trump’s social media success stems in part from platforms but in part from the “economic, political and social currents” that have prompted Trump and will continue to promote the next few assets to come.
“Trump’s accounts are draining because they distract from the deeper things we had to deal with yesterday,” Phillips says. The supervisory board decision was billed as a major referendum on how Facebook balances free speech and security; instead, it was a no-decision that does little to change why we ended up here in the first place.
The creation of the council itself “was essentially a media PR campaign,” says Joan Donovan, research director at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. The board approach means that Facebook has been tasked with deciding for itself how to apply its own policies, which is essentially the “worst case scenario for Facebook, which has put it all together,” she said. “They had a job.”
“When it comes to Facebook, you have to remember that Facebook is not just a place where people post,” says Donovan. “It effectively gives you the ability to have your own TV station,” as well as a network of related pages and accounts that can quickly amplify content to an audience of millions of people. Facebook is both an organizing tool and a distribution network, and its power as such is commonly used for better or for worse.
