Facebook VP explains decision to ban Trump for 2 years. ‘Severe penalty is justified’

Facebook Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg said Sunday that the company is “justified” in its decision to keep former President Donald Trump suspended from the platform for at least two years.

The company announced the two-year ban Friday. The decision comes after its independent oversight board ruled in May that Facebook was right in suspending Trump from the platform following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — but that its “indeterminate and standardless penalty of indefinite suspension” wasn’t appropriate.

On Friday, Facebook announced it created new “enforcement protocols” that say in times of “civil unrest and ongoing violence,” public figures may be suspended for severe violations for one month, six months, one year or two years, after which Facebook will “look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded.”

‘Most severe penalty is justified’

Clegg said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that, in Trump’s case, the “most severe penalty is justified” and pointed to Facebook’s initial explanation for creating the two-year suspension penalty.

The company said Friday that it took into consideration the need for the suspension “to be long enough to allow a safe period of time after the acts of incitement, to be significant enough to be a deterrent to Mr. Trump and others from committing such severe violations in (the) future and to be proportionate to the gravity of the violation itself.”

Clegg told “This Week” that Facebook’s decision has been criticized by those who think Trump should be allowed back on Facebook immediately and by those who think he should be banned permanently.

“But, in a sense, our job is not to take these decisions with an eye to which side of the political aisle is going to agree or disagree more with us but just to do so in a way that is fair, transparent and proportionate, in line with our rules and, crucially, is responsive to the comments and criticisms that Facebook received when we first suspended Donald Trump from Facebook from the independent oversight board,” he told “This Week.”

Clegg said the board charged Facebook with creating “clearer due process, clearer standards” and “clearer penalties,” which he says it’s now done.

“We’ve now set out what penalties would apply to, what I hope will remain, these very rare cases where a public individual uses our app and services to say things in a way which foments, or in his case praises rioters who were involved in, violence ongoing at that very time,” Clegg said.

Trump said in a statement to media outlets that Facebook’s suspension was an “insult” to those who voted for him.

Clegg said Facebook didn’t expect Trump to “welcome” the decision but that it hopes “reasonable observers will believe that we are acting as reasonably and proportionately as we can in these very difficult circumstances.”

Trump’s social media bans

On Jan. 6, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol as Congress was certifying then-President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the Electoral College.

Rioters broke windows, scaled walls and forced lawmakers to evacuate and pause the election certification. The attack resulted in multiple deaths.

At a rally shortly before the attack, Trump encouraged his supporters to march on Capitol Hill, telling them they “have to show strength” and in the months before the attack, repeatedly made false claims that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent and stolen from him.

Facebook initially locked Trump’s account for 24 hours after the riot. But the next day, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the suspension of his account would continue indefinitely.

The company then requested that its oversight board review that decision. The board upheld the suspension but urged Facebook to review the decision and “to determine and justify a proportionate response that is consistent with the rules that are applied to other users of its platform.”

Other social media companies also suspended Trump following the riot — including Twitter, which permanently banned him from the platform over concerns he would incite more violence.

Trump’s social media bans have been a topic of debate, with opponents calling them an attack on free speech and proponents saying they were overdue given Trump’s rhetoric.