Donald Trump remains banned from Facebook
Facebook's supervisory board decided on Wednesday to uphold the decision to ban former US President Donald Trump from posting messages on his Facebook page and on his Instagram account.
The ax has fallen. Facebook's "Supreme Court" announced Wednesday, May 5, to maintain the ban on ex-President Donald Trump from having any activity on his Facebook and Instagram accounts.
This is not, however, a final decision. The supervisory board considered that it was "not appropriate for Facebook to impose" a sanction of indefinite duration and asked it to "reconsider the arbitrary decision imposed on January 7" within the next six months, a he added in a press release.
A role in the assault on the Capitol
The supervisory board, whose decisions are binding, ruled that the former tenant of the White House "had created an environment where a serious risk of violence was possible" with its comments on January 6, the day of the assault on the Capitol. .
"At the time of the publication of Donald Trump's messages, there was a clear and immediate risk of harm and his words of support for those involved in the riots legitimized their violent actions," he said.
As president, Donald Trump wielded a strong influence, they also argued. “The reach of his posts was significant, with 35 million followers on Facebook and 24 million on Instagram,” he continued.
Policy recommendations to be implemented by Facebook
The council also made policy recommendations to be implemented by Facebook "to develop clear, necessary and proportionate policies that promote public safety and respect freedom of expression."
Facebook had banned the former US president from its platform the day after the invasion of Congress in January by a crowd of his supporters, during the certification of the victory of Joe Biden in the election of November 2020.
The Californian group had previously tolerated many messages from the Republican billionaire deemed problematic by large sections of society, and even internally.
But on January 7, the network finally suspended Donald Trump "until further notice" for breaking his rules on incitement to violence, including in a video where he expressed his support for the rioters. At the end of January, Facebook then turned to its supervisory board to decide this case.
Similar measures taken by Youtube and Twitter
The company is funding this sort of independent "supreme court" to the tune of $ 130 million, made up of 20 international members including journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders and former political leaders. At the start of the year, it issued its first binding verdicts and issued a series of non-binding recommendations.
For Donald Trump, faced with 9,000 responses to a call for public comment, she had given herself more time.
Other platforms took similar action after the Capitol invasion. YouTube, in particular, waits until "the risk of violence decreases" before allowing the former president to post videos again on his channel.
Twitter - his former favorite network with nearly 89 million subscribers - suspended his account irrevocably, even though Jack Dorsey, the founder of the network, had lamented a "failure to promote healthy conversation."
Donald Trump's adviser, Jason Miller, had promised that Donald Trump would launch his own platform with "tens of millions of subscribers". But for now it is only a blog added to its site Tuesday, May 4, with the same messages as on the Gab network, openly conservative and conspiratorial.
"Absolute shame"
"What Facebook, Twitter and Google have done is an absolute disgrace," Donald Trump responded in a statement Wednesday.
"We took away the freedom of speech from the President of the United States because madmen on the radical left are afraid of the truth but the truth will come out anyway, bigger and stronger than ever," added Donald Trump, in reference to his baseless accusations that electoral fraud tainted the US presidential election of November 2020.
"The people of this country will not let it go! These social networking groups must pay a political price, and must never again be allowed to destroy and decimate our electoral process," continued the former US president.
On the same line, Republican congressmen have reacted by threatening to attack the technology giants if they regain a majority in Congress, during the next parliamentary elections of the "midterms" in November 2022.
If Facebook "can ban President Trump, all conservative voices could follow," tweeted House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. "A Republican majority in the House will limit the power of the tech giants on our word," he promised.
