There’s lots to like in the FOB’s decision, and it proves why the whole experiment shows promise. I focus on the details of the decision and what they reveal about Facebook’s rules, and the FOB’s role in reviewing them. There will be plenty of hot takes about the decision. But in trying to preserve its own legitimacy, the FOB’s decision here has just deferred the controversy and doomed the public to more unending Trump-focused news cycles for up to another six months, and potentially longer.
Any definitive decision would have made lots of people very unhappy. A Pew research poll released today found that Americans were essentially completely evenly split on whether Trump should be allowed back on social media. It is also an attempt to split the baby-not letting Trump back on, but also not demanding a permanent ban of his account-and to avoid the inevitable controversy that would have attended any final decision. It contains a number of recommendations that, if Facebook follows them, will significantly improve the clarity and mitigate the arbitrariness of Facebook’s decision-making. It dinged Facebook’s “indefinite” ban as a “vague, standardless penalty”-“indefinite,” according to the FOB, is very much not synonymous with “permanent.” Now, Facebook has six months to conduct a review of what to do with Trump’s account.
But the FOB did not settle the matter for once and for all: It punted back to Facebook the question of what to do with the account now. 7 restriction on former President Donald Trump’s account, largely on the basis of the ongoing violence at the time of the posts that led to the ban. By now, you will have read that on Wednesday the Facebook Oversight Board (FOB) upheld Facebook’s Jan.
The long international nightmare is not over.