Facebook said it wants the Oversight Board’s binding decision on the matter, given its importance.
“We think it is important for the board to review this and reach an independent judgment on whether it should be upheld,” wrote Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg. “Pending the decision of the council, Mr. Trump’s access will remain suspended indefinitely.”
John Taylor, a Facebook Oversight Board spokesman, told CNN Business that, according to its structure, the board will have 90 days to review the decision, but “we hope to act faster than that.”
Facebook and Instagram have banned Trump’s account from posting at least the remainder of his term and perhaps “indefinitely” after his supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol building to protest the election. Twitter, Trump’s favorite social media platform, banned him permanently.
In a blog post, the Oversight Board said Trump or his page administrators will be able to send their comments on Facebook’s decision to the board, as he considers whether to uphold or overturn Facebook’s decision.
“The Supervisory Board was launched in late 2020 to address exactly the type of highly important issues raised by this case,” said the board. “The Council was created to provide an independent review of Facebook’s approach to the most challenging content issues, which have huge implications for global human rights and freedom of expression.”
Jamal Greene, co-chairman of the Supervisory Board, told CNN Business that the case will be viewed and decided through three main lenses: whether Trump’s content really violated Facebook’s own platform policies; whether Facebook’s decision is consistent with its own stated values; and whether Trump’s suspension is broadly in line with – or undermines – international human rights principles.
Kate Klonick, assistant professor of law at St. John’s University who studies technology and online speech, predicted that many will see the case as Facebook’s “Marbury v. Madison moment”, referring to the crucial case of the U.S. Supreme Court that established the role of the judicial system in reviewing laws and government actions.
Given the tendency of social media platforms to follow the leader in consequent content enforcement decisions, the Oversight Board’s decision can have broad ramifications, according to Evelyn Douek, a professor at Harvard University Law School.
“There is no greater doubt in moderating content now than whether Trump’s deformation represents the beginning of a new era in how companies police their platforms,” she wrote in a blog. “The past few weeks have also shown that what a platform does can spread over the Internet. … For all of these reasons, the council’s decision on the Trump case can affect much more than a Facebook page.”