It’s Facebook’s house, so we shouldn’t complain too much about what it does—within the law—inside its doors. But there’s something about its new judgment and sentence of Donald Trump, banning him from the site for two years and promising to review his return based on the “risk to public safety,” that screams arbitrary and capricious as opposed to just and consistent. It’s almost as if Facebook deliberately set out to render a verdict in the Trump case that nobody would applaud. It doesn’t overtly offend anybody in the MAGA crowd or the resistance; it appeals to the soft middle that doesn’t really care about Trump, or Facebook, or Facebook’s weaseling jurisprudence.
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs and former member of Parliament, took great pride in staking that low ground in his post about the decision. “There are many people who believe it was not appropriate for a private company like Facebook to suspend an outgoing President from its platform, and many others who believe Mr. Trump should have immediately been banned for life,” he wrote. The best you can say for Clegg and the company’s decision is that it was Solomonic but only in the sense that Facebook followed through on its threat to slice the baby in half by doing just that—and doing it as a Friday news dump.
In slamming Facebook for inconsistency, we must also take care to also point out that the social media company is consistent about its inconsistencies. Thanks to founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s governance, it practiced inconsistent enforcement of its “hate speech” guidelines and then apologized for those inconsistencies. It banned political ads after the November election, then reinstated them in March. It banned posts that contradicted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention directions and then lifted the ban. Don’t take my word for it: The co-chairman of Facebook’s so-called Oversight Board, appointed to review and judge Facebook’s content policy and actions, called its content-banning policies a “shambles” last month.
“Their rules are a shambles,” Michael McConnell said. “They are not transparent. They are unclear. They are internally inconsistent.”
Facebook thought it had purchased a pass from criticism when it established the Oversight Board in 2020. All the tough questions about running the site could be punted by Zuckerberg to the oversighters, leaving him little to do but trap and spend its $86 billion in annual revenues. The company’s ban of Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot was one of its decisions Zuckerberg send to the Oversight Board for readjudication. But rather than take the heat off Facebook, the Oversight Board said in May, yes, you can ban Trump for cheering on the rioter (“We love you. You’re very special,” he posted to them) but it’s up to the company whether the ban should be temporary or permanent. “What we are telling Facebook is that they can’t invent penalties as they go along. They have to stick to their own rules,” board member Helle Thorning-Schmidt said.
Their rules, apparently, are “kick the can two years further down the road.”
A normal company and a normal CEO would be ashamed to run its affairs in such a slipshod fashion. But Facebook and Zuckerberg are not normal. He’s the guy who habitually screws up but always apologizes dramatically when found out. Fast Company and other outlets have collected and cataloged his apology storms over the years. The privacy-invading “Beacon” feature. Zuck was sorry about that. Sharing unique user IDs with advertisers? So sorry. Calling Facebook users “dumb fucks”? Rejecting the argument that Facebook helped Trump win? The Cambridge Analytica scandal? Sorry, sorry, sorry. There should be a law of limitations that rations public apologies and puts those who exceed the limit into a penalty box for six months.
The Facebook directive—like double-secret probation, only it’s not secret—offers Trump the reinstatement of his Facebook account in January 2023, just in time to for the 2024 election cycle if he moderates his overt verbal support of violence. Habitual offender that it is, the Trump tongue probably won’t be able to restrain itself, and the probation officers at Facebook will be forced to show their hand. When they do, we can expect them to bring Trump down in a plodding, inconsistent and apologetic manner. No company in America and no CEO can punt better than Facebook and Zuckerberg. Everything at Facebook is subject to arbitrary revision. You can count on many more can-kickings by Zuckerberg before the Trump matter is finally resolved.
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“Why be shy when you can kick the can and shout?” the High Llamas sang in 1994. Send your favorite High Llamas tune to [email protected]. My email alerts would never understood Facebook. My Twitter thinks it would be disloyal to have a Facebook account. My RSS feed violated its Facebook probation and it doesn’t even have an account.
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Opinion | On Trump, Facebook Kicks the Can—Again - POLITICO
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