Since the day after the deadly Jan. 6 riots on the U.S. Capitol, former President Donald Trump’s social media accounts have been silent \u2014 muzzled for inciting violence using the platforms as online megaphones.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, his fate on Facebook, the biggest social platform around, will be decided. The company’s quasi-independent Oversight Board will announce its ruling around 9 a.m. ET. If it rules in Trump’s favor, Facebook has seven days to reinstate the account. If the board upholds Facebook’s decision, Trump will remain \u201cindefinitely\u201d suspended.<\/p>\n
Politicians, free speech experts and activists around the world are watching the decision closely. It has implications not only for Trump but for tech companies, world leaders and people across the political spectrum \u2014 many of whom have wildly conflicting views of the proper role for technology companies when it comes to regulating online speech and protecting people from abuse and misinformation.<\/p>\n
After years of handling Trump\u2019s inflammatory rhetoric with a light touch, Facebook and Instagram took the drastic step of silencing his accounts in January. In announcing the unprecedented move, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the risk of allowing Trump to continue using the platform was too great.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,\u201d Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page on Jan. 7.<\/p>\n
A day before the announcement, Trump unveiled a new blog on his personal website, \u201cFrom the Desk of Donald J. Trump.\u201d While the page includes a dramatic video claiming, \u201cA BEACON OF FREEDOM ARISES\u201d and hailing \u201cA PLACE TO SPEAK FREELY AND SAFELY,\u201d the page is little more than a displays of Trump\u2019s recent statements \u2014 available elsewhere on the website \u2014 that can be easily shared on Facebook and Twitter, the platforms that banished him after the riot.<\/p>\n
While Trump aides have spent months teasing his plans to launch his own social media platform, his spokesman Jason Miller said the blog was something separate.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Trump\u2019s website is a great resource to find his latest statements and highlights from his first term in office, but this is not a new social media platform,\u201d he tweeted. \u201cWe\u2019ll have additional information coming on that front in the very near future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barred from social media, Trump has embraced other platforms for getting his message out. He does frequent interviews with friendly news outlets and has emailed a flurry of statements to reporters through his official office and political group.<\/p>\n
Trump has even said he prefers the statements to his old tweets, often describing them as more \u201celegant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Facebook created the oversight panel to rule on thorny content on its platforms following widespread criticism of its difficulty responding swiftly and effectively to misinformation, hate speech and nefarious influence campaigns. Its decisions so far \u2014 all nine of them \u2014 have tended to favor free expression over the restriction of content.<\/p>\n
In its first rulings, the panel overturned four out of five decisions by the social network to take down questionable material. It ordered Facebook to restore posts by users that the company said broke standards on adult nudity, hate speech, or dangerous individuals.<\/p>\n
Critics of Facebook, however, worry that the Oversight Board is a mere distraction from the company’s deeper problems \u2014 ones that can’t be addressed in a handful of high-profile cases by a semi-independent body of experts.<\/p>\n
\u201cFacebook set the rules, are judge, jury and executioner and control their own appeals court and their own Supreme Court. The decisions they make have an impact on our democracies, national security and biosecurity and cannot be left to their own in house theatre of the absurd,\u201d said Imran Ahmed, CEO Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit critical of Facebook. \u201cWhatever the judgement tomorrow, this whole fiasco shows why we need democratic regulation of Big Tech.”<\/p>\n
Gautam Hans, a technology law and free speech expert and professor at Vanderbilt University, said he finds the Oversight Board structure to be \u201cfrustrating and a bit of a sideshow from the larger policy and social questions that we have about these companies.”<\/p>\n
\u201cTo some degree, Facebook is trying to create an accountability mechanism that I think undermines efforts to have government regulation and legislation,\u201d Hans said. \u201cIf any other company decided, well, we\u2019re just going to outsource our decision-making to some quasi-independent body, that would be thought of as ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Associated Press Writer Jill Colvin contributed to this story.<\/p>\n