By Ashley Young-
Facebook’s oversight Board has called for the social giant to review the permanent nature of the ban imposed on former president Donald Trump, criticising it as beyond the scope of Facebook’s normal penalties.
It has ordered Facebook to review the decision and “justify a proportionate response” that is applied to everyone, including ordinary users.
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The former controversial president was banned from both sites in January following the Capitol Hill riots.
The Oversight Board said the initial decision to permanently suspend Mr Trump was “indeterminate and standardless”, and that the correct response should be “consistent with the rules that are applied to other users of its platform”.
Facebook has been told they must respond within six months.
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At a press conference, co-chair Helle Thorning-Schmidt admitted: “We did not have an easy answer.”
She added that she felt Facebook would “appreciate the decision”.
“We are telling Facebook to go back and be more transparent about how it assesses these things. Treat all users the same and don’t give arbitrary penalties.”
In response, Facebook said it would “consider the board’s decision and determine an action that is clear and proportionate”.
The board also made a number of recommendations about how Facebook to use improve its policies and the social network promised to “carefully review” these.
The Board was due to announce its decision last month but delayed the ruling in order to review more than 9,000 public responses to cases, it said.
The decision of the board is honourable, and should be applauded, despite the fact Trump was becoming a bit of a nuisance on social media with some of his outrageous comments.
Following the ruling, Mr Trump wrote that “what Facebook, Twitter, and Google have done is a total disgrace”.
“Free speech has been taken away from the President of the United States because the radical left lunatics are afraid of the truth,” he said, referring to himself as president.
“The people of our country will not stand for it! These corrupt social media companies must pay a political price, and must never again be allowed to destroy and decimate our electoral process,” he said.
Rules
The Oversight Board decided that Mr Trump had broken Facebook’s community standards, and upheld the ban.
However, it questioned the indefinite part of the ban as failing to follow any clear proceedure.
“It is not permissible for Facebook to keep a user off the platform for an undefined period, with no criteria for when or whether the account will be restored,” it said in a statement.
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