“It is an important case and, therefore, we will work as quickly as possible, consistently to decide the case in a consistent and principled manner,” said Jamal Greene, professor at Columbia Law School and co-chair of the agency, to the POLITICAL. “We will all work hard to decide responsibly as soon as possible.”
Public comments will be posted online when the board publishes its decision in the Trump case.
The case represents a watershed in the limits that social media companies can impose on elected officials for online posts that potentially target tens of millions of voter candidates. Trump also remains suspended on several other platforms, including Twitter.
Facebook is under Republican scrutiny on charges that he and other tech giants censor conservative speech, while Democrats blame the company for not acting fast enough to crack down on Trump’s party comments before and during the 6 riots. of January.
The Oversight Board’s decision in the Trump case will be binding on Facebook. In its first series of decisions, announced on Thursday, the group opposed the company’s decisions to remove online posts in four out of five cases involving issues such as religious prejudice and threats of violence.
Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a former Danish prime minister and another co-chairman of the group, told POLITICO not to interpret this as a precedent for how the agency might eventually rule in Trump’s case. “You can’t read anything about it,” she said.