Facebook And Instagram Agree To Restore Trump’s Accounts
from the as-expected dept
In a move that shouldn’t really surprise anyone, Meta has said that both Facebook and Instagram will be restoring Donald Trump’s accounts, which it had “indefinitely” suspended in the wake of the January 6th insurrection two years ago. As you’ll recall, after that suspension, the Oversight Board had agreed to hear Trump’s appeal of the suspension, resulting in it chastising Meta for giving a indefinite suspension. It noted that Trump did break the rules but the “indefinite” part of the suspension was a problem, as it was not at all transparent how that process worked, and Meta had no official setup for indefinite suspensions.
In response, Meta agreed that it would review the decision this month, once the suspension hit the two year mark. We just recently noted that Trump had formally asked Meta to lift the suspension as he’s gearing up to use the various social media apps as a part of his comeback tour/2024 stay out of jail Presidential campaign.
On top of that, with Elon Musk putting back Trump’s Twitter account, it was really only a matter of time until this happened.
Meta tries to claim that there was some big process as to how all this went down, but that feels like a pretty weak cover story:
To assess whether the serious risk to public safety that existed in January 2021 has sufficiently receded, we have evaluated the current environment according to our Crisis Policy Protocol, which included looking at the conduct of the US 2022 midterm elections, and expert assessments on the current security environment. Our determination is that the risk has sufficiently receded, and that we should therefore adhere to the two-year timeline we set out. As such, we will be reinstating Mr. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks. However, we are doing so with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.
Like any other Facebook or Instagram user, Mr. Trump is subject to our Community Standards. In light of his violations, he now also faces heightened penalties for repeat offenses — penalties which will apply to other public figures whose accounts are reinstated from suspensions related to civil unrest under our updated protocol. In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation.
The company does basically say that it will be watching Trump’s account carefully to see if it’s pushing for civic unrest, but that… seems kinda silly. By that point, it will likely be too late.
Our updated protocol also addresses content that does not violate our Community Standards but that contributes to the sort of risk that materialized on January 6, such as content that delegitimizes an upcoming election or is related to QAnon. We may limit the distribution of such posts, and for repeated instances, may temporarily restrict access to our advertising tools. This step would mean that content would remain visible on Mr. Trump’s account but would not be distributed in people’s Feeds, even if they follow Mr. Trump. We may also remove the reshare button from such posts, and may stop them being recommended or run as ads. In the event that Mr. Trump posts content that violates the letter of the Community Standards but, under our newsworthy content policy, we assess there is a public interest in knowing that Mr. Trump made the statement that outweighs any potential harm, we may similarly opt to restrict the distribution of such posts but leave them visible on Mr. Trump’s account. We are taking these steps in light of the Oversight Board’s emphasis on high-reach and influential users and its emphasis on Meta’s role “to create necessary and proportionate penalties that respond to severe violations of its content policies.”
I don’t find this particularly problematic. Even if it feels like they retconned a “process,” at least there was some sort of process and a plan, which was my main critique of Musk’s way of making this same decision.
One thing I will note: it is interesting that this all comes after the revelation of Meta’s questionable Xcheck program, which was used to basically give high profile accounts (which almost certainly included Trump) a free pass on Facebook so they could break rules with something close to impunity. Just recently, the Oversight Board pressured Meta to make some pretty significant changes to Xcheck to make sure that it wasn’t abused by the powerful to violate Facebook’s rules with no consequence.
I guess we’ll soon find out whether the new program really works.
For what it’s worth, there has been a lot of hand-wringing from various organizations about how awful this is, with many pointing to the fact that Trump continues to spew conspiracy theories and nonsense over on Truth Social. But, if anything, that really kind of serves as a way to highlight how little this might actually mean. Trump posting to Facebook seems unlikely to do much more damage than he’s already doing by spewing crazy uncle nonsense over on his own site. It only really matters if you think that Trump’s postings to Facebook and Instagram are actually going to influence many people, and at this point, that seems unlikely. Those who are bought in seem bought in. Those who aren’t, aren’t. Is anyone expecting him to still continue changing people’s minds?
Filed Under: content moderation, donald trump, politics
Companies: facebook, instagram, meta
Comments on “Facebook And Instagram Agree To Restore Trump’s Accounts”
Are there pools on..
1) When Trump violates the TOS again
and
2) When they pull Muamar Covfefe’s plug again.
Put me down for 1 week and 1 year.
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‘Five minutes’ and ‘Never’ assuming that second question is referring to America’s Biggest Loser by another name.
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Minutes? I applaud your optimism…
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Assuming he doesn’t have anything pre-written and has to type it out himself anyway, if it’s pre-written five seconds would indeed probably be closer.
'That leopard would never do the same thing twice, right?'
Facebook: We’ll be carefully watching the account and will apply penalties for TOS violations.
No, they won’t. They just gave him confirmation that the rules don’t apply to him and I’ve no doubt that execs will be leaning hard on any moderators to not even think about touching his account because the slightest hint of moderation will be used by his cultists as evidence of ‘conservative persecution’ and evidence that the government needs to reign social media in to prevent that.
If what he’s already said and done wasn’t enough to get him a lifetime ban nothing will be, and you can be damn sure if he didn’t know understand that before he does now.
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I struggle to determine how this is any different than saying that guy who just got paroled after a 2 year sentence just learned the rules don’t apply to them.
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Are you upset that a private company can host or not host whatever they want or that the guy who broke your brains (collectively) somehow didn’t get executed on live TV for you to pleasure yourself over?
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None of any of that.
This is not a charade.
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false dichotomy.
Actually, it matters quite a bit for everyone who thinks that everyone should have to follow the same rules and get punished in the same way as everyone else who doesn’t follow the rules.
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Most people do think that. Our government representatives don’t, not just Trump. Trump is just a nastier problem.
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Why would you want to force a private company to follow the rules for their platform that YOU want instead of what THEY want?
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What about not being a pussy and just ignoring stuff you disagree with?
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… said the person in a comment about an article they disagreed with.
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Dumbass. Saying stuff in response to people saying stuff you disagree with is the appropriate response. Whining that they should be banned is not.
That those two things somehow seem ironic or hypocritical to you is an indictment of your whole thinking process.
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Whoosh.
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Oh the irony of that statement from you…
Re: What a backward standard of guts you have
I’m not trying to pull a strawman here, just warning you that such an attitude could be construed to be support of cherry-picking and disinformation campaigns. “Just ignore election lies and let them proliferate, you coward.”
People with real guts are the ones who are willing to say out loud “I don’t want to be near you” and “I don’t like what you did”. That’s what I believe, anyway. You’re entitled to your personal standards, though I doubt that you would follow your “ignore what you disagree with” standard if the shoe were on the other foot.
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They literally aren’t following their claimed standard in the process of stating it, so, no.
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He did, actually and the fact you liberal morons think there was a contradiction there is sooo telling
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No, no, “Ban this person his words are dangerous” is in no way fucking courageous position, it’s in fact quite the opposite.
You don’t get to ban something cuz you don’t like it. Not if it’s “hate speech” or “disinformation” whatever the hell you think that is. You don’t like it? You don’t have to listen to it. If you’re afraid of other people listening to it too fucking bad.
Make an argument, refute them. Or the STFU. But no more banning.
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“You don’t get to ban something cuz you don’t like it”
Fun fact: yes, we do. When someone comes into a community and causes a disruption, they can be asked to leave. You might be swearing loudly in an otherwise quiet restaurant. You might be making inappropriate comments at a waitress. You might simply be saying nothing offensive, but you chose the wrong venue to do so, such as a theatre.
Nobody’s afraid of what you say, we just don’t want to listen to you and know from experience that letting a bunch of people who don’t care about others around them gather is bad for business.
“Make an argument, refute them.”
Or, to put it another way, force minorities who are the target of attacks to constantly defend their own existence because another minority dislikes them. No thanks, we’d rather tell the abusers to leave everyone alone.
If you’re told to leave premises on a regular basis, the problem is likely not everyone else. Either you’re incapable of adjusting your conversation to the current social situation, or you’re deliberately causing trouble. Either way, the rest of us don’t have to put up with you.
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Large generic speech platforms should not be censoring opinions based on viewpoint. If they do, they should be encouraged / shamed / bought out to stop doing that.
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“Large generic speech platforms should not be censoring opinions based on viewpoint”
No matter how much you repeat this, it’s not true.
“If they do, they should be encouraged / shamed / bought out to stop doing that.”
They’re already being “encouraged” and “shamed” by idiots like you. There’s reasons why nobody listens to you.
As for being “bought out” – interesting… you disagree with the way others exercise their freedoms of speech and free association, and your “solution” to that is to take their property if they don’t comply with your wishes.
I do love it when you guys admit that your problem is other people having different opinions while retaining property rights, and you prefer oligarchy/communism (depending on whether you mean corporate or government takeover) to allowing such disagreement. But, such is the recourse of those who have already lost in the free market and the marketplace of ideas.
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…still don’t exist in the real world, according to even your own made-up definitions
…They aren’t
…impossible for a private platform to do even if they wanted to
…is behavior exclusive to right-wing platforms like Parler, Truth, and Conservapedia, yet you never seem to call them out.
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Nah, it ain’t exclusive per se, but like, also, it’s not bad.
If your viewpoint is “other people don’t deserve to be treated like people”, then I am fully prepared to censor your ass off spaces I control.
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Yeah, sometimes ya do. On my website, I get to ban someone I don’t like. On a privately-owned social media website, they get to ban someone they don’t like, or that so many of their users don’t like that it impacts them financially.
Says the privileged snowflake who would never have to modify or limit their social media experience in a futile attempt to avoid harassment.
You think LGBT people and people of color should have to constantly keep making an argument why they should be able to live without harassment or discrimination? It’s pretty obvious you have never had to do that, and the fact that you think others should have demonstrates a high level of ignorance.
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…said nobody who supports or understands the concept of free speech, ever.
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True, that would make the one swinging the banhammer a petty tyrant.
But banning someone who keeps breaking the rules, despite the mod team giving the offender many, many times to reform their behavior, is totally fine, under 1A.
And if the offender’s first few lines are emininently harassing…
Good to know then. LEAVE.
Oh wait, you don’t want to, because you’re dead set on wanting to harass Mike.
I don’t like you, and I consider you an active threat to not only the community here, but also to the world. I do not want to associate with you, but you apparently don’t care.
And I’ve fucking tried. If the asshole doesn’t want to listen and continues to gaslight, harass and otherwise out themselves as a white supremacist sleazebag, well…
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“You don’t get to ban something cuz you don’t like it.”
Oh yes I do. I’ve banned hundreds of people like you and I’ll ban hundreds more.
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Yeah good advice, when will you follow it?
Hmm… so let’s see if I got these notes right…
Organize and launch an armed insurrection on the US Capitol which saw your drones try to take politicians hostage and even kill some of them, harming and killing police officers, breaking countless laws that led to numerous convictions, and attempting to hijack democracy itself for your own personal gain:
2 Year suspension.
Post a pornographic image:
Permanent/lifetime ban.
Got it… I think?
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I guess Facebook considers screwing democracy to be a lesser offense than screwing a human?
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“What’s getting fucked here?” seems to be the guiding question, yes.
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And it won’t be the last time, either.
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The better comparison would be:
Pst a pornographic image but you have 2 million followers? All you’ll get is a simple “please don’t do that again”.
But, obviously if the average person did that, yes, they’d be banned.
So, like Twitter restoring Trump, this is all about attention, eyeballs, and money.
Facebook and Twitter are already getting plenty of attention for simply saying they’re allowing Trump back. How much more attention will they get when Trump goes back to posting stupid things?
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More dog shit breeding dog shit. 3rd world tabloid noise already went out of style in 1920.
All that hit air and climate change makes kittens sad.
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… posted no conscious human, ever.
Remember that lies about the election on social media dropped by 73% when their source got banned.
This was always going to happen, facebook management are completely amoral and only care about things that may harm their bottom line. I suspect the only reason it didn’t happen sooner is that he and other conservatives kicked off like spoiled children and brought the lawyers in, and they didn’t want to be seen as caving and let the bad president set a bad precedent so publicly
Worth noting that this decision took the Oversight Board by surprise:
“The Board welcomes that Meta has followed the Board’s recommendations to introduce a crisis policy protocol in order to improve Meta’s policy response to crises, and to undertake an assessment about the current security environment. However, the Board calls on Meta to provide additional details of its assessment so that the Board can review the implementation of the Board’s decision and recommendations in this case, to define varying violation severities by public figures in the context of civil unrest, and to articulate the way that the policy on public figure violations in the context of civil unrest relates to the crisis policy protocol.”
Bit of a lukewarm reception by Meta’s own advisory board.
I also found the ACLU’s reaction interesting. They tweeted that reinstating Trump was the “right call” because the public has an interest in hearing from an ex-president. Very speech-maximalist position.
Me, I have doubts about the benefits of giving this megaphone back to Trump, political significance be damned.
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“I have doubts about the benefits of giving this megaphone back to Trump”
Hopefully, enough people are tired of the Tangerine blowhard and his bullshit that it doesn’t help him at all. He’s cried election fraud so often at this point that the only people that believe him are people that desperately want it to be true. The response to anything he says should be, “whatever”. Eventually he will say something that ends with him behind bars where he belongs.
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“Hopefully, enough people are tired of the Tangerine blowhard and his bullshit that it doesn’t help him at all”
We’ll see. There’s a fair possibility that he’ll split the right between true cultists and people who don’t follow him. But, as much as people were inspired to vote against him in 2020 and deliver a historical upset in 2022, there’s clearly enough supporters to upset things if decent people don’t turn out in full.
“Eventually he will say something that ends with him behind bars where he belongs.”
Sadly, if that happens, there will be violence from the cult…
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“Me, I have doubts about the benefits of giving this megaphone back to Trump, political significance be damned.”
There are no benefits. Despite many reports about how FB and other social media platforms treated right-wing propaganda with kid gloves, they refused to act until there was a real world outcome they couldn’t ignore.
The ACLU will err on the side of all speech being allowed, but the real world outcome here will be amplifying some toxic conspiracy theories, then outrage when he inevitably steps over the a line again.
I can only hope that he helps further fracture the far right and lead to a decent outcome in 2024.
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Your claims about "process" are made up
I don’t really care if you approve of either company’s “process” or not, but flipping out about Twitter un-banning Trump without “process” was pretty dumb because they banned him without process. But you hate Musk so you cried about it like it was the worst thing in the world so that you could shit talk Musk. Now FB is doing basically the same thing (the “process” very made up, why would you give credit to a sham?) But you don’t hate Zuckerberg so you’re not going to be a hyperbolic asshole about it.
Of course the truth is the tide has changed, people have realized most of the alarm about “misinformation” was made up propaganda and in fact a dystopian means of control. People were realizing that anyway but the twitter files (which you have done your best to ignore and discredit) made that undeniable. Much that was true said by the citizens was banned and much that was claimed to be true was wrong. Some of it was purposeful lies for political control.
And for that matter, Musk has shown you can not shadow ban people for thought crimes and it’s fine, actually.
So FB isn’t going to ban Trump cuz it’s politically untenable to do so. The position that you and most of your readers seem to have that you ban people for saying things you don’t like has been refuted. Tried it, it was awful, won’t be tolerated.
Yeah man, kinda like free speech is good, actually. You don’t like what Trump says? That’s fine. You want to ignore him? Ok. Yo want to refute hinm? Great. Ban him forever from the public square? Regardless of if that is a completely private decision (i.e. no “helpful” FBI ban lists) it’s an awful idea, a sign of a society in decline. Glad we’re pulling back from that.
And if you’re the kinda person who thinks it’s good to whine about “misinformation” (which you are in no way qualified to judge any more than I am) and how it should be removed just get fucked honestly. You’re the junior gestapo, which is ironic cuz you probably whine about all those “nazis” too.
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“flipping out about Twitter un-banning Trump without “process” was pretty dumb because they banned him without process”
Is that what you’re being told? The process is pretty clear from where I sit, and in fact it was clear that they singled him out for exceptions from the process until keeping him around threatened their bottom line.
“But you don’t hate Zuckerberg”
Lol.
“Tried it, it was awful”
I’m fairly sure that you’ll find that not having right-wing trolls on social media was as far away from awful as many people can imagine. You might not have liked it, but for some of us not having nonsense hatred inserted into random conversations was quite nice.
“So FB isn’t going to ban Trump cuz it’s politically untenable to do so”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/26/facebook-conservatives-2020-421146
Yeah, not for the reasons you hallucinate though.
“Ban him forever from the public square?”
I’m wondering – how big does a platform have to be before you guys demand the means of production be seized and private property owners lose rights to it? I know you always itch for such communist takeovers, but now that you’re not pretending that Twitter is the only “square” and you’re admitting they have competitors that normal people manage to use simultaneously without being banned, how big do they have to be before they lose control of their property?
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“Ban him forever from the public square?”
For values of ‘public square’ equating to, for example, a social media space I control?
Yeah. And anyone who expresses support for him with him as well, since that is, at this point, an explicit declaration of a refusal to abide by any rule requiring respect for human dignity. The Ravelry option, in other words.
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Don’t lie to yourself, Matthew. It is exceedingly bad form, especially coming from you.
I find this handling of miscreant website users to be similar to the handling of citizens by law enforcement.
The entitled get a free pass while everyone else is kicked to the curb for the same offense.
Then the entitled begin beating their chest in a show of bravado declaring their above the law status.
And all of us wage slaves are supposed to eat this all up in our worship of these benevolent overlords.
This aint gonna work
Instagram is a shit service. A couple months ago, i created an account just to be able to view one user’s photos, since Instagram demands that you log in to see anything but the most recent posts. After creating the account, I never posted anything, I didn’t even “like” any content and only used it occasionally.
One day I try to log in and I’m informed that my account has been banned. It wants to send another verification email to me. I let it and enter the code it sends. It then tells me that it needs to send me a text. I used a free website/number and received the text, then entered the code it sent. Next it tells me to write the code on a piece of paper and take a selfie of myself holding it up with my face clearly visible. Instead I created an image that read “FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING GAMES” and uploaded that instead.