In 2020, Facebook created what it refers to as a “Independent Oversight Board,” which has the power to examine Facebook’s choices and offer suggestions.

• After making many posts regarding the uprising at the US Capitol, Mr. Trump’s social media accounts were stopped on January 6. Facebook has never before taken this action against a serving president, prime minister, or other head of state over their posts.
• The independent oversight board made a choice in May. They consider Facebook’s ban to be reasonable in comparison to Trump’s ban, but they have issues with the restriction’s indefinite nature. The committee suggested a more precise time frame for the prohibition and asked Facebook to revisit the decision within six months.
• Trump voiced his displeasure with the independent oversight committee’s choice. He said that the ruling violated his right to free speech and that he had been treated unfairly.

• What Facebook, Twitter, and Google did, according to Trump, is a terrible shame and a source of national embarrassment. These dishonest social media platforms must bear a political cost and must never again be permitted to skew and sabotage our election outcomes.

• According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, “the risks of allowing the President to continue using our services during this time are simply too great.”
• In a statement, the independent monitoring panel blasted Facebook’s choice. While the committee acknowledged that they thought it was permissible to keep the ban in place when there was a genuine threat of violence, they did not think Facebook’s “indefinite” ban was appropriate. They criticised Facebook’s strategy, contending that it was attempting to escape accountability by enforcing vague and non-specific penalties before referring the matter to an impartial monitoring panel.
• On a conference call with media, Michael McConnell, co-chair of the oversight board, declared that “this indefinite penalty fails the international sniff test.”

Editors: Changluo Guo，Yuan Ding，Xingyu Bao，Kangwei Lu

Date: 16/08/2023