Donald Trump And The Facebook Oversight Board

This is the transcript of a radio monologue from my morning show. Consider supporting us by subscribing for only $7/month here.

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Facebook has decided for now to keep Donald Trump off of their website. This story was misreported by the media that it was a permanent ban. It's not a permanent ban as you will see.

The Oversight Board

Facebook set up an oversight board that essentially will operate as a supreme court for Facebook. When someone is banned from Facebook, that person can appeal to this court. Sitting on the court are a number of free speech advocates from around the world who will vote on cases like the Trump case.

This is from The Washington Post to set the stage.

Facebook tried to pass the buck on former president Donald Trump, but the buck got passed right back.

For several years, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has pushed the idea that he and his company shouldn’t be in the position of creating the rules of the road to govern the personal expression of billions of people. He went so far as to dedicate $130 million to fund an independent panel of outside experts to which the company could outsource the thorniest decisions about what types of content — and voices — should be allowed to stay up on Facebook.

When the company banned Trump on Jan. 6 for social media posts encouraging the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol, Zuckerberg turned that hard decision over to that newly formed independent panel, the Oversight Board, for review, hoping it would make the final determination.

But on Wednesday, the 20-member panel punted the decision back to Facebook, recommending the company decide within six months whether to permanently ban or restore Trump’s account. He is currently suspended “indefinitely,” a one-off penalty outside Facebook’s usual rules.

The board, set up to act as a “Supreme Court-like” body to police Facebook’s content decisions, scolded the company for trying to pass it off, too.

“In applying a vague, standardless penalty and then referring this case to the Board to resolve, Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities,” the members wrote in a sharply worded ruling. “The Board declines Facebook’s request and insists that Facebook apply and justify a defined penalty.”

A lot of the president's supporters assumed he would get back on Facebook after some time had passed. I want to stake out my position very clearly here. At the time, I think it was right to suspend the President's accounts from social media. I realize many of you disagree. I think at the time it was right, but it should have been temporary and it should now be undone. He is a private citizen. Treat him like everyone else and allow him back on if he follows the rules. He is not just a private citizen, though he's also a former President of the United States and a potential candidate for the presidency in 2024.

Elected Officials Should Be Protected If…

I am of the position that elected officials should be given more latitude than private officials when they are from a democratic nation whose voters can hold them accountable. I would be more gracious to Donald Trump, Justin Trudeau, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, or someone whose voters could hold them accountable than I would the Ayatollah Khamenei or President Xi of China. These leaders essentially live in dictatorships and the people can't hold them accountable for their actions.

Facebook made nobody happy with this decision and ticked off the new judges on the oversight board. I have concerns about the oversight panel in that it's stacked with people who are not from countries with our First Amendment, and so essentially the Americans on the panel have to scale themselves down to a global standard that is less free than our own standard. I think the American standard for Americans should be the default standard for Facebook. I think it was a mistake in how this was set up. But Facebook went with it and now the oversight board has punted it back. They've upheld it for now saying this is not a permanent ban.

We're also in this weird position where the Democrats think that Donald Trump should be permanently banned, and Republicans think he obviously should never have been banned. Facebook is stuck in the middle making everyone mad. There's just no winning. I personally think that Facebook should take the position of saying no one gets banned unless they're literally out there advocating violence that is targeted towards individuals. Nazism or something like that would fall under this category. The goal would be to make it as clear as possible to understand who gets banned. Ultimately, if someone posts something that is not violent in nature but offends you, you can block them. You don't have to follow accounts you don’t like.

Facebook tried to turn it into a win by saying, "We're creating this global body that's going to navigate these issues for us." Even the oversight board said, "No thanks."

Jonathan Turley over at Fox has an opinion piece, he says,

"One of my favorite trial accounts is from Ireland where an Englishman accused an Irishman of stealing a pair of boots. The guilt of the defendant was absolutely clear, but the Irish jury could not get itself to rule for the Englishman. Instead, it acquitted the Irishman, but added a line, 'We do believe O'Brien should give the Englishman back his." Case closed.

After years of expanding the censorship of political figures like Trump, few thought Facebook could summon the courage to declare itself wrong in the ban first implemented. Instead, the board ruled that it was absolutely right to suspend Trump, but it may want to reconsider the permanent ban given the absence of any objective standard to support it. It may be too harsh to expect anything from a board that literally monitors one of the world's largest censorship programs, Facebook, Twitter, and other companies now openly engage in what they like to euphemistically call content modification. The decision reflects the convoluted logic of the sensor's free speech review board, the company and the board start from the assumption that it can and should sensor views deemed misinformation or dangerous. The starting position, therefore, is that censorship is justified and that content neutrality is dangerous."

Jonathan Turley is right on that.

Listen, this is Facebook's platform. Facebook is a private entity. It gets to decide who uses it and who does not have access to Facebook. Of all of the big tech companies, the two that you can most easily end in your life are Facebook and Apple. With Apple, you just stop buying their devices and they're out of your life. You'll deal with inferior devices like Androids that aren't nearly as robust or durable, but you can get rid of Apple if you want.

You can also get rid of Facebook. You don't have to use Facebook. You don't have to use Instagram. You can just get rid of it all, poof, gone, be done with it. It's harder to get rid of Google because so much of the backend of the web uses Google. If you get rid of Apple, you can't really get rid of Google if you want some sort of smart device. Many devices use the Android operating system underneath. In addition, it is really hard to get rid of Amazon. In addition to shopping on amazon.com, many of the websites you frequent use Amazon servers. It's very hard to get Amazon out of your life, but you don't have to use Facebook.

That being said, I do think we're missing some of the nuances here with Facebook. It is far more open to having conservatives on the platform than Twitter. It is far less likely to ban you or remove your content. Facebook famously stood for the blue-collar guy up in New York who put up the video of Nancy Pelosi and slowed down her speech, it sounded like she's having a stroke or something. They refused to take it down. They got excoriated by everyone from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama for refusing to take down that video and claimed it did not violate their terms of service.

This is what conservatives miss in the conversation about “Big Tech”. They’re not all the same.

Twitter is far more pernicious than Facebook. Ultimately, it's their platform and they don't have to have you there if they don't want you there. Twitter decided they needed to suspend the President’s account after his statements on January 6th. They should let him back in now. I fundamentally believe it's time to let Donald Trump back on Twitter. I don't disagree with their original decision, but time heals all wounds.

Many on the left believe President Trump should have no platform. These are the very same people going to his new website on a daily basis and putting up screenshots of all the stuff he's saying because the media is obsessed with Donald Trump. The media cannot leave Donald Trump alone. He lives rent-free in their head. They obsess over his statements. They obsess over his lack of statements. He helped their ratings so tremendously that he lives rent-free in their head. There's no way around it. He's got to do something. He's got to make an appearance. If he doesn't make an appearance, they cover his lack of appearance. I think it's very funny that Facebook set up this oversight board, passes the buck to them and they say, "Nope, you're not passing it to us. We were fine with the bad, but now you need to justify the permanence of the ban.” I guess if Facebook doesn't justify the permanence of the ban, the oversight board will let him back on the platform.

Mark Zuckerberg is demonized by a lot of people on the left because he's not truly one of them. Mark Zuckerberg is not a progressive so he's demonized by the left because they think they should control Facebook, and they know ultimately they don't. Conservatives vilify Mark Zuckerberg because they think he is a progressive and they certainly know that many of the people at Facebook are progressive, including Sheryl Sandberg, who runs the day-to-day operations.

Facebook is in a very difficult position. I think they work themselves out of it by being a bastion of free speech and making it easy to block someone but hard to get banned. They should continue to prioritize an algorithm that focuses on friends and family more so than the groups that you join and the pages you like. But I really think it's time to let Donald Trump back in. I don't think Zuckerberg got it wrong. Dealing with what we were dealing with on January 6th, it had to be done. The President clearly was getting a little unhinged and putting him in a timeout to let him settle down was the right decision. But it's time to let him back.

If Facebook wants to outsource its decision-making to someone other than Facebook, that's fine. However, I think it should not be to an outside group, filled with people who aren't committed to a First Amendment because they don't have one in their country. Ultimately, this is going to cause Facebook to be less open to free speech than I wish it would be. Many on the left and the right are looking for villains these days and they found an easy one in Facebook. The right views Facebook as a villain because they don't get everything they want. The left views Facebook as a villain because they know they can't control Mark Zuckerberg.

Jack Dorsey is just a pillar of left-wing progressive movements. The heads of Google are and Tim Cook at Apple is as well. The head of Netflix pours money into left-wing causes. Zuckerberg kind of stands alone as this more libertarian guy so the left resents like hell that there is one massive tech company out there in Silicon Valley that they themselves don't get to control so they're perfectly happy to vilify him. Frankly, I think that conservatives should look at this and recognize that Facebook may not be perfect but they’re not necessarily fully against conservatives like Twitter, Google, and others. But in this day and age, everyone is extremely tribal. You're either with us or against us, you can't be somewhat in the middle. I think this may be what Facebook is trying to do. It’s the most difficult position to be in, but far better for conservatives than being as progressively predictable as Twitter and we should recognize and appreciate that.