Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Source: Getty
Summary: Facebookâs Oversight Boardâan independent group of experts set up by the social media giantâis reviewing whether to continue to ban former U.S. president Donald Trump from the platform. What it decides to do may have a lasting impact on American democracy.
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On January 7, a day after a violent mob overran the U.S. Capitol, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg placed an indefinite suspension on then president Donald Trump’s account. Facebook’s ban, together with the decision by other tech companies to boot Trump and his far-right allies from their platforms, ignited a global debate. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador compared Facebook’s decision to the “Spanish Inquisition.” Other leaders, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, expressed more measured unease about the power of private companies to regulate political leaders’ speech. But many people applauded Facebook’s decision. EU digital czar Margrethe Vestager observed, “I can’t say I would have done it differently if I was in their shoes.” The British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen—who gained attention in 2019 for asserting that under Facebook’s logic, it would have allowed Hitler to post 30-second ads—tweeted, “This is the most important moment in the history of social media. The world’s largest platforms have banned the world’s biggest purveyor of lies.”