How Mark Zuckerberg's attempt to sidestep decision on Trump ban backfired

Mark Zuckerberg never wanted the burden of having to ban a head of state.

“I feel fundamentally uncomfortable sitting here in California in an office making content policy decisions for people around the world,” Facebook’s founder said in 2018, adding that he wanted a system in which “I am not the one making those decisions”.

Zuckerberg’s solution was a novel one. Last year Facebook set up an oversight board, a quasi-judicial body funded by the social network but built to be independent.

Nicknamed a “supreme court” for Facebook, the board would allow Zuckerberg to hand off the company’s most difficult decisions to a group of academics and human rights activists.

But on Wednesday, its most high-profile case to date saw it return Facebook’s serve directly back to Zuckerberg.

In a highly-anticipated ruling on the company’s January decision to indefinitely suspend Donald Trump from Facebook and Instagram, the oversight board found that Trump had indeed “severely violated” its rules.

However, it demanded that Facebook revisit its decision within six months, and criticised the company’s handling of the matter.

The board argued that Trump’s punishment – an indefinite suspension, but not a permanent ban – was against the company’s own moderation policy, calling it “indeterminate and standardless”. The ruling could have ramifications far beyond Facebook.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt, co-chairman of the board and the former prime minister of Denmark, said the tech site “cannot invent new unwritten rules when it suits them”.

It was not the worst-case scenario for Facebook. Reversing Trump’s suspension completely would have made the company a target for Democrat politicians and separated Facebook from social networks like Twitter and YouTube that have also banned Trump.

But putting the ball back in Facebook’s court is the opposite of what the oversight board was set up to do: outsource Zuckerberg’s most thorny decisions in a way that, critics contend, provided the company’s all-powerful chief with political cover. Zuckerberg has made no secret of the fact that he has the final say on Facebook’s biggest policy decisions.

He chose to take no action against an incendiary Trump post last summer during US protests over the death of George Floyd, and announced the then-president’s suspension on his personal Facebook account on Jan 7, the day after rioters stormed the US Capitol building as politicians were certifying Joe Biden’s election victory. Mr Trump’s account was suspended after posting a video in which he told the rioters: “We love you. You’re very special,” and a second statement calling them “great patriots” who had seen the election “unceremoniously viciously stripped away”.

The oversight board, after a three-month review and considering almost 10,000 submissions, concurred with the decision. “Given the seriousness of the violations and the ongoing risk of violence, Facebook was justified in suspending Mr Trump’s accounts on Jan 6 and extending that suspension on Jan 7,” it said.

But that was where the board’s agreement with Facebook stopped. It ordered a review of the case, saying the company must come up with a proportionate response consistent with its own rules and one that would be equally applied to other users. Michael McConnell, a board co-chairman and former George Bush appointee to the US appeals court, said Facebook had “engaged in ad-hockery” and passed responsibility to the body “apparently hoping that the board would do what it had not done … decide on an appropriate and proportionate conclusion regarding the future of Mr Trump’s account”.

The board also criticised Facebook for failing to fully co-operate, saying it had refused to fully answer nine of the 46 questions the board had asked it, including those about contacts between Facebook and politicians after Trump’s suspension, and Facebook’s own role in the Jan 6 riots.

Sir Nick Clegg, Facebook’s head of public policy, has played a major part in setting up the oversight board. He said Facebook would look at the ruling and “determine an action that is clear and proportionate”, with Trump’s accounts remaining suspended.

That puts the decision back with Facebook and Zuckerberg. The company must not only make a decision about Trump’s accounts, but may also have to craft new policies on suspending political leaders.

The Oversight Board may have put more political pressure on Facebook, the opposite of its supposed intention.

“The Oversight Board has shown a degree of independence, and the company is now under at least somewhat more pressure to police its platforms more diligently and openly,” said Paul Barrett of the NYU Stern Centre for Business and Human Rights.

Facebook is likely to face further intense political scrutiny. Trump’s ire on Wednesday was directed at tech companies in general, rather than the board. “What Facebook, Twitter and Google have done is a total disgrace and an embarrassment to our country,” he said.

US senator Ted Cruz tweeted: “For every liberal celebrating Trump’s social media ban, if the Big Tech oligarchs can muzzle the former president, what’s to stop them from silencing you?” Fellow Republican Marsha Blackburn said: “It’s clear that Mark Zuckerberg views himself as the arbiter of free speech.” Congressman Jim Jordan tweeted: “Break them up.”

Any indication that Facebook might restore Trump’s account, meanwhile, would draw attacks from the Left, creating trouble for the company in a Democrat-controlled Washington.

Forcing it to come up with clear rules for world leaders, something it struggled to do throughout Trump’s presidency, could also create further problems in other parts of the world, where authoritarians are becoming increasingly bold about manipulating social media for their own ends.

Zuckerberg hoped his grand experiment with the oversight board would remove some of his problems. Instead, it has added to them.