Social-Media
Facebook suspends Trump for two years and modifies the rules for politicians.
Former President Donald Trump's indefinite ban on Facebook has been extended to a two-year restriction that will end on January 7, 2023. Facebook's vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, declared Friday that the company will examine Trump's ban to "see if the danger to public safety has faded." If Trump is re-elected and continues to break Facebook's rules, the company will impose a "severe set of quickly increasing punishment" that might result in a permanent ban.
The ban comes as part of a larger shift in how Facebook handles "newsworthy" items that violate company rules, as well as political expression.Some infringing content that is "newsworthy or vital to the public interest" will be allowed to stay on the social network. However, as The Verge reported yesterday, the “rare instances” where the newsworthy exception is used will be published. Politicians will now be subject to the same content regulations as normal users, reversing Facebook's prior policy of mostly shielding elected officials from such enforcement.
“When we assess content for newsworthiness, we will not treat content posted by politicians any differently from content posted by anyone else,” Facebook’s Clegg wrote in a blog post. “Instead, we will simply apply our newsworthiness balancing test in the same way to all content, measuring whether the public interest value of the content outweighs the potential risk of harm by leaving it up.”
Previously, Facebook officials said that political speech was essentially in the public interest and that private corporations should only act in extreme cases. Because of this, Trump and other elected officials were able to use Facebook in ways that average users would be penalized for under Facebook's content guidelines. By exposing politicians to possibly stricter moderation in the future, the firm risks inflaming governments that have previously threatened digital companies for banning political speech.
In a statement to The Verge on Friday, Trump called Facebook’s ruling “an insult” to his supporters who voted in the “rigged” presidential election, adding that the company “shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing.”
The adjustments were made in response to a request from the Oversight Board, a group of human rights experts Facebook sponsored to make choices on content issues that were deemed contentious. The board requested that Facebook reconsider its suggestions for clarifying Trump's account status and alter how it handled politicians differently from ordinary users.
Facebook also revealed more about its covert strikes system for content that breaches company standards but does not merit an instant ban in answer to the board.
A user's account may be permanently banned if they receive enough strikes, but Facebook hasn't explained how strikes work before because it was concerned that doing so might encourage individuals to game the system. While the specifics of strikes are still unknown, Facebook did provide some critical elements, such as the fact that you may be hit with a strike for accepting illegal content on a page you administer, and that all strikes expire after a year.
