Facebook suspends Donald Trump for two years, former president denounces "insult"
The former US president will only be able to return when the "risks to the safety of the public have disappeared," said the Facebook platform.
Donald Trump will not regain access to Facebook and Instagram until at least January 7, 2023. The Facebook group announced Friday evening that the former US president, whose accounts had been suspended sine die on January 7 after the storming du Capitole, will be banned from these two platforms for a total period of two years. This suspension may be extended if experts believe that Donald Trump's return to Facebook presents a danger. In the event of further breaches of the rules, the former president will risk a permanent deactivation of his accounts.
Donald Trump was quick to react. "Facebook's decision is an insult" to "the 75 million people who voted for us in 2020," the ex-president said in a statement, adding that the social media giant "should not be allowed to s 'get away with this censorship and muzzling'.
A request from the Supervisory Board
This rule was designed for the case of Donald Trump, but will apply to all public figures in serious circumstances, such as civil unrest. Account suspensions can range from one month to two years, as shown in a chart released by Nick Clegg, Facebook's director of public affairs.
In response to the @OversightBoard's ruling, Facebook is suspending Donald Trump’s accounts for 2 years, effective from the date of the initial suspension in January this year. At that time, we will assess the public safety risk and extend the restrictions if conditions require. https://t.co/23JTzX2pfx
— Nick Clegg (@nickclegg) June 4, 2021
This decision did not come out of nowhere. Facebook seized its Supervisory Board on January 21 to find out whether Donald Trump should or should not recover his accounts. "By taking a vague and arbitrary sanction (a suspension for an indefinite period, editor's note) then by referring this case for resolution to the council, Facebook seeks to flee its responsibilities", decided the independent body, founded in 2020, on May 5 latest. Facebook had six months to refine its sanction. It only took him a month in the end.
End of preferential treatment for politicians
The Supervisory Board had also issued several recommendations on how Facebook should handle the moderation of influential political accounts. The social network announces to follow some of them, the most important of which is perhaps that political leaders will once again become users almost like others.
Since 2019, Facebook no longer touched the writings of heads of state, regardless of whether the message violated rules for using the social network. The platform only intervened if the message could lead to a real and immediate risk of violence - for example, a call for murder against minorities.
Political leaders will lose part of their immunity totem. Their writings will no longer be automatically protected and may therefore be moderated. However, Facebook teams may decide to keep certain sulphurous messages online if they consider that they are in the public interest. The social network reactivates a rule put in place in 2016, during the election of Donald Trump and which, according to the Washington Post, was used only six times and only outside the United States. But Facebook adds something new: when it makes such a decision, it will make it public in the name of transparency.
Facebook is criticized from all sides for its handling of the comments of political figures. For some, it shows a guilty and accomplice laissez-faire; for others, he seeks to censor the voices that do not suit him and takes on a role that should not fall to a private company. "We know that our decisions will always be controversial," admits Facebook in its press release. But he claims to follow the recommendations of his supervisory board.
