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Facebook’s oversight board puts the power back in the platform’s hands to decide Trump’s fate. History tells us that’s dangerous.

Media Matters / By

The Facebook Oversight Board just announced its decision to uphold the suspension of former President Donald Trump in response to his actions on January 6. But the board ruled that Facebook should not have imposed “the indeterminate and standardless penalty of indefinite suspension” and the platform now must “decide the appropriate penalty” for the former president within the next six months.

With this decision, the board has recognized the harm that Trump caused by using the platform to promote misinformation and harmful rhetoric, but has also chosen to put Trump’s fate back in Facebook’s hands. And given the platform’s track record, we’re not optimistic Facebook will make the right decision.

Roughly a quarter of Trump’s posts on Facebook in 2020 contained COVID-19 misinformation, election lies, or extreme rhetoric about his critics

Media Matters / By

Before Facebook finally took action against former President Donald Trump’s account for inciting violence on January 6, it long allowed him to use the platform to push misinformation to a broad audience, vilify his critics, and contribute to increased public distrust of institutions.

Media Matters analyzed the 6,081 Facebook posts Trump made between January 1, 2020, and January 6, 2021, when Facebook suspended his account, and we found that roughly a quarter of these posts contained misinformation, content warranting an additional information label, or harmful rhetoric about others.