WASHINGTON — The decision by Facebook’s oversight board to block former President Donald Trump’s return to the world’s biggest social media platform for now is a major political blow, denying him access to a huge audience he needs to help him amplify his message, maintain his fundraising base, and retain his dominance over the Republican Party.
For a former television celebrity who is a glutton for public attention, the decision extends by six months a political starvation diet imposed since January by a social media blackout and his departure from the White House.
Facebook’s oversight board Wednesday upheld Facebook’s decision to suspend Trump’s account following his Jan. 6 tweets, extending the ban on the former president’s access to the powerful social media account.
But the board said it was inappropriate for Facebook to have set that suspension “indefinitely,” and said the company should, in the next six months, review the case and make a clear decision about whether he will be banned from the site permanently or for a specific amount of time.
The move buys the company some time as it ensures Trump will remain off all of the company’s social media platforms, including Instagram and What’s App, extending a nearly four-month suspension imposed because of his inflammatory posts in relation to the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.
Trump is also likely to continue to be banned from Twitter, his most frequently used social media platform. Losing access to Facebook was an even bigger setback because it reaches a broader audience of more than 1.8 billion active daily users and is particularly useful as a fundraising and organizing tool.
According to a November poll conducted by the Center for Campaign Innovation, a conservative nonprofit research firm, 60% of voters used Facebook on a daily basis — even more than the 56% who watch local TV news daily. Just 18% used Twitter daily.
“His social media presence is very, very central to him being a dominant actor in U.S. politics at this time,” said Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor of information studies at UCLA and author of a book, “Beyond the Valley,” on the relationships between technology and politics.
“This will be fuel for Trump’s supporters and fellow Republicans in Congress to say that tech companies are biased against him.” It sends an important message, not just to Trump and his allies, but to the next set of crazies who think it’s OK to traffic in hate and fear and not have consequences. It is important to set standards to truth.Shomik Dutta, Higher Ground Labs
Shomik Dutta, co-founder of Higher Ground Labs, an incubator for progressive political technology in Santa Monica, applauded the extension of the Trump ban.
“It sends an important message, not just to Trump and his allies, but to the next set of crazies who think it’s OK to traffic in hate and fear and not have consequences,” Dutta said. “It is important to set standards for truth.”
After the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, Facebook suspended Trump’s account indefinitely. Twitter, YouTube and other social media companies did so as well. Twitter has shown no sign of lifting its ban, and a legal challenge involving Trump’s account has been thrown out as moot by the Supreme Court.
“We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in announcing Trump’s suspension in January.
That was a huge blow for a politician who pioneered the use of social media to advance himself, raise campaign cash, and dominate news throughout his presidency. The social media shutdown in January, weeks before President Biden’s inauguration, contributed to the abrupt transformation of Trump from being omnipresent, to being almost invisible to the general public for the last three months. That has been a surprise to those who predicted that Trump would not quietly leave the political stage after the election but would continue to be a constant commentator on events and his successor.
