Facebook And Instagram Agree To Restore Trump’s Accounts
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?