For many people, social media has lost its attraction since January, when the oligarchs banished the former President from their platforms.
While it looks as his permanent ban from Twitter isn’t going away soon, he may be making a comeback on Facebook.
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The Facebook Oversight Board could restore the former president’s privileges on the platform as soon as May after conducting an independent review that will include input from Facebook and its users, the board’s co-chair and former prime minister of Denmark Helle Thorning-Schmidt, told British television’s Channel 4 News on Tuesday in an interview.
“What’s important about having an oversight board is for the first time, we get an opportunity to be on the users’ side,” she told anchor Jon Snow.
Previously, users could only “complain to Facebook,” but can now demand a binding opinion from the independent board, Thorning-Schmidt said.
“And we have a process of dealing with issues which is much deeper, much more thorough, much more transparent than we’ve ever seen before,” she explained.
Thorning-Schmidt confirmed that Donald Trump already “submitted an appeal”, and it is accepted by the board.
“Obviously, it’s a very high-profile case, but that’s exactly why the oversight board was created in the first place: to take the cases that are of interest to a lot of people and also are very principled cases,” she said.
Thorning-Schmidt went on to say that the board has 90 days for the review, even though they’re “trying to do this case a little bit faster,” which means Trump could be reinstated by the spring.
She also said that apart from hearing from Facebook and the former president’s team, the board is also “open for public comments about this particular case,”.
“We’ve already received a public comment in the thousands and thousands on this case, and of course we will look through those public comments and make them part of our decision-making,” she vowed.
This would be important for Trump, who has been banned from social media since Jan. 6 and the incursion into the U.S. Capitol. Instagram and Snapchat also pulled his profiles and even two of his banks refused to do business with him.
What may be called a test case for the First Amendment in the future, the repression of Trump and his followers was immediate and rigorous in the aftermath.
The case against him – not very well built by his detractors — was that he encouraged the violence that happened that day, and his supporters allegedly coordinated the attack on social media.
The charge’s emotional appeal predominantly depended on the tragic death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who allegedly succumbed to injuries sustained during the incursion — a claim disputed by his own family.
There hasn’t been much recourse for Donald Trump or his supporters, due to the fact these actions against him came from private companies.
But, there is new hope that the Facebook Oversight Board may be the solution to the tension that exists between private companies asserting their rights to deplatform whomever they want and the First Amendment right to free speech for all U.S. citizens.
There is no guarantee that the former president will be allowed to stay if he is reinstated, of course, because it’s become evident that the gods of Silicon Valley are unsteady.
Also, one other fact is that Trump favored Twitter for his best (and worst) news-making posts, so lifting the Facebook ban is more of a consolation prize.
Yet, this possible change gives a little hope that Trump will once again find his audience, and that social media magnates will simply not interfere.
Maybe this means Mark Zuckerberg now cares to maintain an open, town-square model on Facebook, or that the company is hedging its bets against an eventual government crackdown.
But most probably, Facebook is just the first platform to confess that Donald Trump is the best thing that has ever happened to social media, and things have not been the same without him.
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Source: The Western Journal
