{"id":254455,"date":"2023-02-02T12:37:09","date_gmt":"2023-02-02T17:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=254455"},"modified":"2023-02-02T12:37:09","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T17:37:09","slug":"trump-and-facebook-the-platform-is-trying-to-have-it-both-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2023\/02\/02\/trump-and-facebook-the-platform-is-trying-to-have-it-both-ways\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Facebook: The platform is trying to have it both ways"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On January 7, 2021, the day after rioters stormed the Capitol, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram\u2014which was not then, but is now, known as Meta\u2014suspended Donald Trump\u2019s accounts on those platforms<\/a>, because, the company said, there was a risk that he would encourage further violence. Meta suspended Trump\u2019s accounts indefinitely, but,\u00a0as I wrote for CJR at the time<\/a>, the company\u2019s Oversight Board, an arms-length body of advisors that reviews Meta\u2019s content decisions, said a few months later that this was arbitrary, since Meta did not then have a detailed policy for suspensions of public figures. The board advised Meta to come up with one, and the company subsequently said that it\u00a0would review Trump\u2019s suspension<\/a>\u00a0in two years. Last week, with its time up, Meta announced that it would reinstate Trump\u2019s accounts at some point \u201cin the coming weeks.\u201d\u00a0They<\/a>\u00a0appear to have been restored already, although Trump has yet to post. (He has an exclusivity deal with his own social network, Truth Social, but\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0reportedly planning a return to Twitter and Facebook). At time of writing, the most recent post on his Facebook page is from January 6, 2021, asking everyone at the Capitol to \u201cremain peaceful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, Nick Clegg, Meta\u2019s president of global affairs (and a former deputy prime minister of the UK<\/a>), wrote in a blog post<\/a> that the company believes that \u201copen debate and the free flow of ideas are important values,\u201d and that the public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying<\/a>, \u201cthe good, the bad and the ugly.\u201d Clegg said that Meta had gone through an elaborate process to \u201cassess whether the serious risk to public safety that existed in January 2021\u201d had receded, including an evaluation of<\/a> the current environment according to the company\u2019s Crisis Policy Protocol, a process by which it tries to<\/a> \u201cassess on and off-platform risks of imminent harm and respond with specific policy and product actions\u201d, along with \u201cexpert assessments on the current security environment.\u201d The conclusion? That the risk had receded. Not that Meta is giving Trump carte blanche on his return. His accounts will henceforth be subject to what Clegg called<\/a> \u201cnew guardrails,\u201d including restrictions on posts that might contribute to \u201cthe sort of risk that materialized on January 6, such as content that delegitimizes an upcoming election.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clegg\u2019s post, however, didn\u2019t say anything about what would happen should Trump delegitimize a past<\/em> election, which is something that he does all the time\u2014and a Meta spokesperson subsequently confirmed to CNN\u2019s Oliver Darcy<\/a> that the company will<\/em> allow Trump to post about the 2020 election without consequences. And, since Trump is now a candidate, his account will not be not subject to fact-checking<\/a> by Meta, a decision the company made even before allowing his return, also according to CNN. Charlie Warzel, of The Atlantic,<\/em> writes that Trump \u201chas offered zero evidence that he changed during his social-media exile\u201d and will likely use Facebook to whip up partisan resentment upon his return. If anything, Warzel argues<\/a>, Trump\u2019s posts on Truth Social suggest that he \u201chas become more erratic, angry, and conspiratorial.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Melissa Ryan pointed out<\/a>, in her CtrlAltRightDelete<\/em> newsletter, that just last month, Trump called, on Truth Social, for his immediate reinstatement<\/a> as president, and asked for the Constitution to be suspended so that this could happen. The New York Times<\/em> reports that since he launched Truth Social in February of last year, Trump has also shared hundreds of posts promoting<\/a> various QAnon conspiracy theories. \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody should reasonably expect him to be any different if he\u2019s back on Facebook and Twitter,\u201d Jared Holt, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told the Times<\/em>. \u201cWhen it comes to spreading conspiracy theories, Trump is the big tuna.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others agree that Trump is unlikely to stay within Clegg\u2019s guardrails. Casey Newton wrote, in his Platformer<\/em> newsletter<\/a>, about a number of potential scenarios that could result from Trump\u2019s reinstatement, with \u201cthe most plausible, given Trump\u2019s pathological lack of restraint\u201d being that \u201che returns to posting on Twitter; he cross-posts those tweets to Facebook; those post violate Facebook\u2019s community standards, and he triggers a set of escalating suspensions that get him suspended for another two years and leave us back at square one.\u201d (Twitter also banned Trump in the wake of the insurrection, but restored his access last year after Elon Musk acquired the company.) And Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and writer for Lawfare<\/em>, noted in his newsletter<\/a> that Trump \u201cis a living, breathing, walking Community Standards violation.\u201dSign up for CJR’s daily email<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some observers suspect that Meta\u2019s decision was based on considerations beyond a philosophical commitment to free speech. Rashad Robinson, the president of the civil-rights group Color of Change, told the Times <\/em>that he believes that Meta\u2019s decision was primarily economic<\/a>. \u201cCorporations like Facebook have continued to find ways to profit off Trump even as they\u2019ve condemned him,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just that they let Donald Trump back on their platform, it\u2019s that they benefit from it.\u201d (Trump spent at least eighty-nine million dollars<\/a> to advertise on Facebook and Instagram during the 2020 election. His campaign was not prevented from buying Facebook ads even after his account was suspended.) Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, wrote at Slate<\/em>, meanwhile, that Meta\u2019s decision<\/a> to reinstate Trump is not the result of any true examination of the continued threat he poses to American democracy, \u201cbut a political calculation [given that] Meta executives were already threatened<\/a> with being hauled before House committees to answer to spurious calls of \u2018censorship\u2019\u201d now that Republicans control the chamber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not everyone is opposed to Meta\u2019s decision: Jameel Jaffer, the executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in a statement that the company did the right thing<\/a>, \u201cnot because the former president has any right to be on the platform but because the public has an interest in hearing directly from candidates for political office. It\u2019s better if the major social media platforms err on the side of leaving speech up, even if the speech is offensive or false.\u201d Similarly, Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Times<\/em> that<\/a> Meta\u2019s decision was \u201cthe right call,\u201d because Trump is a political figure and the public is interested in hearing him speak. Others argued that<\/a>, even if Meta\u2019s decision was wrong, the repercussions are likely to be mild because neither Trump nor Facebook are as powerful as they used to be<\/a>. \u201cThere is something underwhelming\u2014stale, even\u2014about the news,\u201d Warzel wrote, noting the \u201cmutual decay of both Trump and Facebook.\u201d Facebook, he argued, has become \u201ca vast wasteland<\/a> of recycled memes and scammy, spammy clickbait,\u201d while Trump\u2019s 2024 campaign has so far been \u201calmost nonexistent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether or not its power has dimmed, Meta seems to want to have it both ways when it comes to Trump. The benefits associated with a following like Trump\u2019s\u2014he currently has thirty-four million Facebook followers\u2014can be significant, even if he might post unhinged conspiracy theories; ultimately, his 2024 campaign will likely drive a lot of engagement. But the company also wants us to think that it cares about its social responsibilities, and that it only reinstated Trump after a vaguely defined process that somehow proved that the societal risks associated with his return are low. In all likelihood, these two imperatives cannot both remain true. Will Meta be as quick to suspend Trump again, if\/when he undermines the 2024 election or otherwise breaches the company\u2019s standards? Perhaps. But by the time it does so, the damage might already be in the rearview mirror\u2014just as it was on January 7, 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: This post was originally published as<\/a> the daily newsletter for the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer<\/em><\/p>\n

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On January 7, 2021, the day after rioters stormed the Capitol, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram\u2014which was not then, but is now, known as Meta\u2014suspended Donald Trump\u2019s accounts on those platforms, because, the company said, there was a risk that he would encourage further violence. Meta suspended Trump\u2019s accounts indefinitely, but,\u00a0as I wrote … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Trump and Facebook: The platform is trying to have it both ways”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}