Facebook’s Half Measure Is Five Months Too Late: Dangerous Loophole Has Cost Lives, Degraded Democracies

Facebook Now Out of Excuses Not to Permanently Ban Donald Trump

Real Facebook Oversight Board Statement on Facebook Policy Changes:

JUNE 4: Facebook shouldn’t have needed a $130m Oversight Board and a team of law professors to tell them dictators and authoritarians were running wild on their platforms. Nearly five months after insurrectionists plotted a coup on Facebook, after years of creating loopholes for tyrants who repeatedly violated their terms of service, Mark Zuckerberg, Nick Clegg and Joel Kaplan want a cookie for changing a policy that has cost lives and degraded democracies.

Facebook isn’t even committing to taking down dangerous, racist, violent or insurrectionist content from authoritarian leaders. They are simply committing to labeling it, using its “newsworthiness exemption” to leave up posts that should otherwise be removed.

As for the Facebook Oversight Board, we congratulate them on suggesting a policy change that hundreds of academics, policymakers, advocates, experts, our partners at the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism and even Facebook’s own employees have already been demanding for years. This half measure — part spin, part policy shift — shows that Facebook is still flailing at content moderation, and that the company needs real independent and transparent oversight to ensure that it’s platforms cannot be weaponized by dictators.

The next step, however, is very clear: Donald Trump is now a private citizen in every sense of the word, and Facebook is out of excuses for not making his ban from the platform permanent. Ban Trump, ban Bannon, and ban any figure using the platform to spread disinformation and foment hate in violation of your terms of service. Facebook has no more excuses.