On Facebook, Trumps suspension has meant that his account is essentially in Facebook jail, where others can read and comment on past posts, but Trump and other account handlers are unable to post new material. Twitter, by contrast, has permanently banned Trump from its service and there is no trace of his account there.
In a colour-coded chart on its blog post on Friday, Facebook said those who violated its policies during times of crisis could be restricted from posting for anywhere between a month (yellow) and two years (red). Future violations, it said, would be met with heightened penalties, up to and including permanent removal.
The policy that exempted politicians from rules on hate speech and abuse was championed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The company said it never applied the policy to Trump, but on Friday backtracked to say it did use it once, in 2019 for a video of a rally on his Facebook page.
The social media giant said it would still apply this newsworthiness exemption to certain posts it deemed to be in the public interest even if they violated Facebook rules. But it would no longer treat material posted by politicians any differently from that posted by anyone else. In addition, Facebook said it would make public whenever it did apply the exemption to a post.
The announcements are in response to recommendations from the companys quasi-independent oversight board. Last month, that panel upheld a decision by Facebook to keep Trump suspended but said the company could not merely suspend him indefinitely and gave it six months to decide what to do with his accounts.
In its decision last month, the board agreed with Facebook that two of Trumps January 6 posts severely violated the content standards of both Facebook and Instagram.
We love you. Youre very special, Trump said to the rioters in the first post. In the second, he called them great patriots and told them to remember this day forever.
Those violated Facebooks rules against praising or supporting people engaged in violence, the board said, warranting the suspension. Specifically, the board cited Facebooks rules against dangerous individuals and organisations, which prohibit anyone who proclaims a violent mission and bans posts that express support or praise of these people or groups.
A group calling itself the Real Facebook Oversight Board, which is critical of Facebook and its oversight panel, said in a statement Friday that the two-year ban brings Trump back just in time for the 2024 presidential election and shows no real strategy to address authoritarian leaders and extremist content, and no intention of taking serious action against disinformation and hate speech.
Facebook has had a general newsworthiness exemption since 2016. But it garnered attention in 2019 when Clegg announced that speech from politicians will be treated as newsworthy content that should, as a general rule, be seen and heard.
The newsworthiness exemption, he explained in a blog post at the time, meant that if someone makes a statement or shares a post which breaks our community standards we will still allow it on our platform if we believe the public interest in seeing it outweighs the risk of harm.
AP
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