The clock is ticking on former President Donald Trump’s ban from Facebook, formerly indefinite and now for two years, the maximum penalty under a newly revealed set of rules for suspending public figures. But when the time comes, the company will reevaluate the ban and decide whether to end or extend it, rendering it indefinitely definite. The prohibition on Trump in January was controversial in different ways to different groups. Still, the issue on which Facebook’s Oversight Board stuck as it chewed over the decision was that nothing in the company’s rules supported an indefinite ban. Either remove him permanently, they said, or put a definite limit to the suspension.
Facebook has chosen… neither. The two-year limit on the ban is largely decorative since the option to extend it is entirely Facebook’s prerogative; as VP of public Affairs Nick Clegg writes: At the end of this period, we will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded. We will evaluate external factors, including violence, restrictions on peaceful assembly, and other markers of civil unrest. Suppose we determine that there is still a serious risk to public safety. In that case, we will extend the rule for a fixed period and reevaluate until that risk receded.
When the suspension is lifted, a strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions will be triggered if Mr. Trump commits further violations in the future, up to and including the permanent removal of his pages and accounts. It fulfills the recommendation of the Oversight Board, but truthfully Trump’s position is no less precarious than before. A ban that can be rescinded or extended whenever the company chooses is certainly “indefinite.” That said, the Facebook decision here does reach beyond the Trump situation. Essentially the Oversight Board suggested they need a rule that defines how they act in cases like Trump’s, so they’ve created a standard… of sorts.
This highly specific “enforcement protocol” is like a visual representation of Facebook saying, “we takWethis very seriously.” While it gives the impression of some sentencing guidelines by which public figures will systematically be given an appropriate ban length, every aspect of the process is arbitrarily decided by Facebook.
What circumstances justify the use of these “heightened penalties”? What kind of violations qualify for bans? How is the severity decided? Who picks the duration of the ban? When that duration expires, can it be extended if “there is still a serious risk to public safety”? What are the “rapidly escalating sanctions” these public figures will face post-suspension? Are there time limits on making decisions? Will they be deliberated publicly?
It’s not that we must assume Facebook will be inconsistent or self-deal or make bad decisions on any of these questions and the many more that come to mind exactly (though that is a real risk), but that this neither adds nor exposes any machinery of the Facebook moderation process during moments of crisis when we most need to see it working.
Despite the new official-looking punishment gradient and re-re-reiterated promise to be transparent, everything involved in what Facebook proposes seems just as obscure and arbitrary as the decision that led to Trump’s ban.
“We know that any penalty we apply — or choose not to apply — will be controversial,” writes Clegg. True, but while some people will be happy with some decisions and others angry, all are united in their desire to have the processes that lead to said penalties elucidated and adhered to. Today’s policy changes do not appear to accomplish that, regarding Trump or anyone else.
