At two online events on Thursday, five members of Facebook’s board of directors defended their decision to make a decision on how long the suspension of former President Donald Trump from the platform should last.
Your defense essentially boiled down to this: It is not our job to write the rules of Facebook.
The decision of the Supervisory Board announced on Wednesday said that Facebook had rightly blocked Trump’s accounts after the January 6 uprising in the US Capitol, because of imminent damage and Trump praised the violent rioters in violation of Facebook’s guidelines.
However, the indefinite timeframe is inappropriate and the board declined to accept Facebook’s obligation to create its own guidelines.
“By applying a vague, standard-free penalty and then referring this case to the board for resolution, Facebook is trying to evade its responsibility,” wrote the board, an independent committee of 20 outside experts. “The board rejects Facebook’s request and insists that Facebook apply and justify a defined penalty.”
The board gave Facebook six months to review the sentence.
In an interview with Axios on Thursday, supervisory board member and former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said: “It was a bit lazy on Facebook to send us a punitive proposal that was not in their own rulebook.”
“We are not here to take responsibility from Facebook,” she added.
Two other board members said it was simply beyond the scope of the board mandate to establish and enforce Facebook’s policies.
“Above all, we thought this was not a decision about Donald Trump, but a decision about Facebook,” said John Samples, board member and vice president of the Cato Institute, to Axios.
Facebook’s decision, he added, included enforcing a rule “that didn’t exist at the time” in imposing the perpetual ban.
“It’s your job to enforce the rules,” he said.
“The board’s job is to make sure Facebook is doing its job,” Columbia University board member and law professor Jamal Greene said at a separate event hosted by the Aspen Institute Thursday. “The board’s job is not primarily to make decisions about users.”
At the same time, Julie Owono, board member and managing director of the digital rights organization Internet Sans Frontières, rejected the premise that the board had evaded a decision in this case. She said the board has set clear guidelines on how Facebook can apply uniform standards in a transparent manner to all users on its platform.
“We say that all users on the platform play a role,” she said. “With this decision, we want to remind Facebook that it is responsible for protecting public security and should do so in a way that respects international human rights.”
Ronaldo Lemos, board member and law professor at Rio de Janeiro State University, said that while he had heard many criticisms of the board’s limited power, it had already had a significant impact on the company.
While the board’s policy recommendations are non-binding, Facebook has agreed to stick with its decisions about reinstalling or removing content. Facebook has funded a trust to help the board, but it can’t revoke the money or remove members. Still, Facebook is ultimately entitled to make its own business decisions.
While the board’s decision likely didn’t live up to Facebook’s expectations, Thorning-Schmidt said she doesn’t think the company will regret forming the board.
“In the long run, they will benefit from the clarity and principled decision-making that we push them into,” she said. “I think this will be the last day they will impose an arbitrary sanction.”
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