• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, June 4, 2021

Facebook today announced that it will continue its suspension of Donald J. Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts for at least two years, into early January 2023 -- taking the ban past the 2022 mid-term elections.

Facebook also announced a partial reversal of its policy that for years has allowed Trump and other politicians/public figures to sidestep its standard content rules prohibiting harmful speech, based on a "newsworthiness" exception. Facebook's rationale for such exceptions has been that it should not interfere with the free speech that is part of the democratic process -- although critics have pointed out that this has allowed dictators, as well as Trump and his supporters, to engage in misinformation campaigns and even encourage violence.

In essence, Facebook will now apply its standard content rules to public figures, but it will still allow for exceptions for newsworthiness --the difference being that it will now publicly disclose instances when it has decided to make exceptions.

The Trump decision is a response to recommendations from the Facebook Oversight Board (FOB), which last month upheld the social media giant's decision to ban Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, but said an indefinite suspension was not one of the penalties defined in its rules.

The board also strongly criticized Facebook for lack of transparency and consistency in policies and implementation in regard to “influential users,” and made several policy change recommendations. It asked that Facebook reply to its ruling by June 5, and review its policies and make a final decision about Trump within six months.

In today's post, Facebook public affairs chief Nick Clegg said Trump's account will be suspended for two years starting on the date it commenced, Jan. 7. At that time, Facebook will "look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded," he wrote. "We will evaluate external factors, including instances of violence, restrictions on peaceful assembly and other markers of civil unrest. If we determine that there is still a serious risk to public safety, we will extend the restriction for a set period of time and continue to re-evaluate until that risk has receded."

"When the suspension is eventually lifted, there will be a strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions that will be triggered if Mr. Trump commits further violations in future, up to and including permanent removal of his pages and accounts," Clegg added.

Trump has already issued a statement calling Facebook's decision censorship and an insult to "his" voters. 

Since Facebook made no mention of fact-checking, politicians, unlike all other Facebook users, are apparently still exempt from that process.

Clegg also announced new "protocols" that spell out timeframes for "heightened penalites" for public figures during "times of civil unrest and ongoing violence, ranging from one month to two years.

And for the first time, Facebook is spelling out how its strike system works, "so that people know what actions our systems will take if they violate our policies," Clegg said.

Finally, Facebook said that it has committed to fully implementing 15 of the oversight board’s 19 recommendations. The company is  "implementing one recommendation in part, still assessing two recommendations, and taking no further action on one recommendation," according to Clegg.

Those responses to the recommendations -- now posted on Facebook's site -- include a commitment to expediting its response to posts by influential users that pose a high probability of imminent harm.

Facebook says that it can't comply with the recommendation that it report on the relative error rates and thematic consistency of determinations made through its cross-check process compared with its ordinary enforcement procedures, because it is not feasible to track that information. 

The partial implementation is in regard to a recommendation that it review its role in the "fraud narrative" that led to the Jan. 6 violence.

"We have expanded research initiatives to understand the effect that Facebook and Instagram have on elections," Facebook states. "Recently we launched a new research partnership with nearly 20 outside academics to look specifically at the role Facebook and Instagram played in the 2020 U.S. election. This research will examine the impact of how people interact with our products, including content shared in News Feed and across Instagram, and the role of features like content ranking systems, with three guiding principles: independence, transparency, and consent. Regardless of what is discovered, Facebook will not restrict the researchers from publishing their findings..."

In response to Facebook's announcement, the watchdog group that calls itself The Real Facebook Oversight Board released a statement charging that "Today’s decision is yet another example of Facebook’s use of ‘accountability theater.'"

"While many will breathe a sigh of relief today that Facebook has banned Donald Trump for a further two years, this decision only goes to underline the enormous, unchecked power of Facebook and its repeated failure to police its platform," the statement continues. "Donald Trump and his allies used Facebook to incite an insurrection and attempted coup of the United States Government. The punishment: Back on Facebook just in time for Trump 2024, with no explanation at all as to why a two-year ban, or what the criteria are for determining his status when the ban expires... Instead of transparency about how it came to this decision, this simply raises a host of other questions in particular with regard to other world leaders and politicians who have abused the platform but against whom Facebook has taken no action. Why Trump, and not Bolsonaro, Duterte and other world leaders who have similarly abused the platform and violated Facebook terms of service? What about Steve Bannon and other users still spreading the big lie on the platform?"