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In Response to Oversight Board, Trump Suspended for Two Years
- azth 5y agoIs anyone actually surprised? Serious question.
- Covzire 5y agoThat the political left would capitalize and exercise their power based on a false narrative that there was an insurrection and ban a former POTUS from their platform which is a de facto monopoly of the American public square? Not at all.
- wnevets 5y agooh you poor soul.
- minimaxir 5y agoThe biggest surprise is that it's a temporary ban instead of a permanent one. (and a temporary ban that ends at a coincidentally convenient time should he run in 2024)
- t0mbstone 5y agoYeah... That's very suspicious, not gonna lie.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoPeople are not immutable. It would set a bad precedent to make the ban permanent, versus revisiting and re-evaluating the decision in the future. This person likely won’t change, but the process should still be reasonable depending on it’s expected lifecycle and the variety of folks who are going to be evaluated by it.
- jackson1442 5y agoRight, but a two-year suspension is essentially unheard of in the tech world. Generally temporary suspensions last up to one month then just go permanent with virtually no appeals. This is still special treatment. If you or I were banned from Facebook, unless you're good friends with a staff member, we would likely be permanently banned.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 5y ago> This is still special treatment. If you or I were banned from Facebook, unless you're good friends with a staff member, we would likely be permanently banned. Since this is supposedly the maximum penalty available for the reason for the suspension under the new framework, that seems unlikely unless it was for some reason not covered by the same rule. Now, it may be that the most likely reason for bans are different than this one, but treating different actions differently isn’t special treatment.
- Qw3r7 5y agoIm really not surprised at all. As the other individual mentioned, its convenient for 2024 purposes. And its the best thing for the GOP if they do let him run, so as he cannot do any more damage of what is left. What a crazy world.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoThat looks almost like "he can't drive traffic for us anymore, but in two years he might".
- Traster 5y agoYes, I am actually surprised that Facebook decided that the response to Trump undermining the 2020 election was to ban him... until the run up to the 2024 election.
- donohoe 5y agoYes - in that I worried they’d not do the right thing
- readflaggedcomm 5y ago>We will evaluate external factors, including [...] restrictions on peaceful assembly and other markers of civil unrest. This was published today, when he is not in office. What restrictions could this refer to?
- tamcap 5y agoHe got a "at least 2 years" ban, to be exact. The 2 years is the punishment for the post. Then, at the end of those 2 years, fb will evaluate the restrictions you quoted, and re-assess if further ban is necessary.
- dominotw 5y ago> re-assess if further ban is necessary. What will be the new factors in 2 years that aren't present now. Current ban is based on "violated Facebook’s Community Standards and Instagram’s Community Guidelines" I don't see what they can possibly re-assess if he isn't on their platform in the first place. They will monitor his behavior outside of their platform and deem him worthy or not?
- trempisacent 5y agoMaybe he'll be dead or otherwise incapacitated by then.
- willcipriano 5y ago> What will be the new factors in 2 years that aren't present now The location of the Overton window. Facebook is just hedging it's bets. George Bush is largely accepted by Democrats now many of whom wore F bush t-shirts a decade or so ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
- trempisacent 5y agoIt's disgusting how Bush managed to have his reputation laundered since then. If there was any real justice in the world, he'd be on trial for war crimes. But of course, there isn't. The best we can hope for is that Bush (and Blair) is somehow captured and beheaded by Islamists. It would be a fitting end, not to mention a rare case of terrorism hitting a legitimate and deserving target, rather than some unfortunate member of the public.
- kaczordon 5y agoSigh, Glenn Greenwald is right, it’s only a matter of time before these censorship tools are used on people on the political left. Everyone cheers it now but they don’t seem to realize this will happen to them in the future once the other side controls these tools.
- beowulfey 5y agoAs the post points out, there is more to life than Facebook. Some people don’t even have accounts for the service, if you can believe it.
- UncleOxidant 5y ago<raises hand> Never had an FB account and don't want one.
- amadeuspagel 5y agoYeah, I don't have a facebook account either, yet I'm concerned about censorship on facebook, because facebook has enough users in my country to swing any election.
- smoldesu 5y agoI hope you're not suggesting that this ban was "censorship", because the user being reprimanded had clearly violated the TOS, which meant that Facebook has no legal obligation to provide them service.
- amadeuspagel 5y agoFrom wikipedia[1]: > Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
- css 5y agoHis accounts are back on Facebook properties, though. Previously they would display as a blank suspended page. https://www.instagram.com/realDonaldTrump/ https://www.instagram.com/realDonaldTrump/ https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump
- ckwalsh 5y agoThey never left. When he was banned, the accounts were left visible, but the ability to post to them was indefinitely restricted.
- vergessenmir 5y agoFacebook is a public company and can do whatever it feels right to do as long as its legal. The concentration of power here is worrying. The bias in their corrective action should worry us more, as should the possible extension of these type of actions to other groups. EU leaders expressed concern over these policies because even they could see that this problematic intervention into the politics of a country is a line that need not be crossed. This extended ban isn't just FB, since other tech platform will likely fall in line. It will be interesting to see if this will increase Trump's popularity when he does return to social platforms since his fanbase has been starved of his attention. EDIT - since I'm being downvoted. The bias being referred to isn't strictly left/right leanings in America since FB is a global platform.
- smoldesu 5y ago> Facebook is a public company and can do whatever it feels right to do as long as its legal. Agreed. > The concentration of power here is worrying. Also agreed. > The bias in their corrective action should worry us more, as should the possible extension of these type of actions to other groups. Aaaaaaaand this is where you lost me. What sort of bias are we seeing here? If anything, Facebook has finally made it's first responsible choice in decades and had a sit-down discussion about a user who broke the rules on their platform. Their corrective action was pretty light too: they're only suspending him, and not even for a duration that could potentially interfere with a (god forbid) 2024 campaign. Only objectionable material has been removed, and his accounts are still up and publicly available. > It will be interesting to see if this will increase Trump's popularity when he does return to social platforms since his fanbase has been starved of his attention. Maybe, but the RNC is going to do everything in their power to stop it. You can expect the 2024 GOP lineup to start early and be furnished with crazy characters, because most of the RNC would rather endorse Kanye than give waste any more time with Trump in office.
- vergessenmir 5y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong but I believe you thought I meant left/right bias, I was looking at this from the lens of Facebook being a global platform. To expect an even response across all political parties across all governments by the metrics they gave around incitements to violence and danger to the public is a bit unrealistic. Bias can easily be introduced in every phase of these cases being accessed. Arguably, long before the political and activist leanings are considered. From that it's not to difficult to see it being extended to other groups.
- trempisacent 5y agoI wonder which other world leaders and government entities will be suspended from Facebook, with the same reasoning. For example, maybe Israel's leadership should be banned for their frequent propaganda there on why it's actually really great to kill Palestinian civilians because they're all secretly Hamas operatives, somehow. Though, I expect Facebook singled Trump out as a special case. As awful as he was, there are world leaders out there saying and doing far worse. Perhaps it only counts if it's the USA?
- xdennis 5y ago> propaganda there on why it's actually really great to kill Palestinian civilians Really? Show us.
- clucas 5y agoI'm not on Facebook so I haven't seen what Netanyahu or other official Israeli government accounts post, but if what you posted is a fair summary of their statements, I think the key difference would be that Israel's leadership is (again, in your paraphrasing) justifying their own actions as legal, not calling on others to take illegal actions. Or are official Israeli Facebook accounts actually calling on their citizens to kill Palestinian civilians? I would actually be curious to see other example of a country's leadership explicitly advocating on Facebook for citizens to take extra-legal actions. Perhaps Duterte's calls for killing drug dealers? But I'm not sure if that was actually on Facebook...
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- andyxor 5y agoTrump2024. Biden & friends are doing such a bad job no censorship will help them.
- dominotw 5y ago> When the suspension is eventually lifted, there will be a strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions that will be triggered if Mr. Trump commits further violations in future We have the same policy in our kids middle school.
- nightski 5y agoFB is dying. Not the company, but the product. I can't remember the last time I logged in. My parents still do, but even they are getting tired of it. I'm sure this isn't universal across the globe, but at least in my little portion of the U.S. it doesn't feel like it used to.
- nrp 5y agoAs a reminder to not over-index on your personal bubble when evaluating companies that operate globally, Facebook's most recent quarterly results: * Facebook daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 1.88 billion on average for March 2021, an increase of 8% year-over-year. * Facebook monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 2.85 billion as of March 31, 2021, an increase of 10% year-over-year. * Family daily active people (DAP) – DAP was 2.72 billion on average for March 2021, an increase of 15% year-over-year. * Family monthly active people (MAP) – MAP was 3.45 billion as of March 31, 2021, an increase of 15% year-over-year.
- tmountain 5y agoThis could also be to loosening bot policy though. As companies struggle to show growth, internal decisions are often made to allow for additional leniency regarding what counts as a "user".
- nightski 5y agoThose numbers do not refute my statement. I'm assuming they are global and not for the U.S. Midwest? Also as I indicated just because a user logs in does not mean they enjoy the product. Also - does a FB ad on a web page refresh your login and count you as a DAU?
- jfengel 5y agoI don't have numbers for the Midwest, but this article[1] says the numbers for the US are basically stable. (Headline says "decline", but a number that small strikes me as margin-of-error stuff given the difficulty in measuring. Even stability would be worrying to Facebook, which depends on continued growth, though if the number really is 195 million, then that's such a huge fraction of the US that I'd think it's nearly saturated). It's possible that some regions are declining faster than others. But if the Midwest is like the rest of the US, a .5% decline isn't something that would be detectable with the naked eye. Even 2x or 3x that wouldn't really be obvious unless you were measuring. It's not impossible that they're measuring wrong, but the source of this data is their quarterly financial report, not a marketing document. [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90598536/facebooks-daily-active-users-decline-for-a-second-quarter-in-the-united-states-and-canada https://www.fastcompany.com/90598536/facebooks-daily-active-...
- rvz 5y ago> “At the end of this period, we will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded.” Facebook should look at the mirror first before assessing the risk of another person or company. In fact, they are the biggest risk to the entire world and public safety, given that the same disinformation campaigns are still running around its platform before, during and after Trump.
- Animats 5y agoAt least they went through an elaborate oversight procedure to do it. It's not like the usual "We're cancelling your account and not telling you why", or, worse, PayPal's "we're cancelling your account and holding your money for six months".
- jaywalk 5y agoOh, you mean the Oversight Board that was handpicked to tell Facebook that they are running things exactly the way they want to be running things?
- HappySweeney 5y agoDon't forget their other purpose as lightning-rod for any negativity FB receives as a result of their decisions.
- cagey 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-ribbon_committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-ribbon_committee
- gitpusher 5y agoTo be reinstated... > when conditions permit > if conditions allow So. What exactly are these "conditions"?
- splatcollision 5y agoWhen the US government is really overthrown in a coup of course, because they're Facebook and they'll always hedge their bets, democracy be dammed...
- cpr 5y agoAll of this based on The Big Lie that Jan 6th was a violent, armed insurrection, invading the Capitol. There's plenty of video evidence showing the Capitol police ushering people in. And the only demonstrator who died directly from the walk-in was Ashli Babbitt, shot by a still un-named and un-indicted person. The officer who was claimed to have been killed by the "invasion" died later of a pre-existing condition, as confirmed by his family. But you'll never hear this from the corrupt MSM.
- basch 5y agoAnd yet, from an optics perspective, it’s still not a good look. Police ushering people in might be even worse. It’s really just teaching other agitators how gullibility and some forceful lies or confusion can start something stupid yet iconic. It should be a “how can we not let that happen again” situation not a “oh lighten up it was just a parade.”
- JustSomeNobody 5y agoTwo years... Just in time for a 2024 comeback. I mean, unless he's reinstated in August like he thinks. If things get bloody enough, maybe he's right. Why does anyone care about him OR Facebook at this point?
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoNope. He's not getting reinstated in August, just like the results weren't overturned in January, and just like he wasn't inaugurated in March. Things may get bloody (I hope no bloodier than January 6, at worst, but we'll see.) But even if they get bloody, no, he's not getting reinstated in August. If anything happens, it will be Harris who becomes president.
- rvz 5y ago> Nope. He's not getting reinstated in August, just like the results weren't overturned in January, and just like he wasn't inaugurated in March. Exactly. It seems the cry babies on the right have finally admitted defeat after throwing a massive tantrum and vandalising the Capitol. On the other hand, I also do remember the cry babies on the left threw a massive tantrum on the streets and vandalised many businesses when the results of the 2016 election were contested for years when Trump won and even after. > If anything happens, it will be Harris who becomes president. Yeah, And this time the Democrats, Big Tech and the media WILL definitely do everything they can to make sure that happens.
- drc37 5y agoThings like this make me more and more want to remove the Section 230 clause shielding companies from lawsuits. "Section 230 has enabled platforms to absolve themselves completely of responsibility for policing their platforms, while blocking or removing third-party speech — including political speech — selectively, and with impunity."
- marksomnian 5y agoOut of interest, have you read https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...?
- Hamuko 5y agoExplain to me how repealing Section 230 fixes this.
- spike021 5y agoEven with Twitter banning him, people tweet/post about Trump all the time, especially his "frustration" with his blog. It's almost like he never left. You'd think with people wanting to silence him they wouldn't continue giving him a platform by sharing about his problems.
- Hamuko 5y ago>people tweet/post about Trump all the time They banned his Twitter account, not remove him from existence. What did you expect? And there's definitely a lot less drama now with Trump having such a large megaphone. I doubt his blog had anywhere near the reach of his Twitter account.
- spike021 5y agoWhile I agree, the point was to take away his platform. I don't believe that part of it was successful.
- void_mint 5y agoHN users continuing to conflate "Private company doing private company things" with "rights" and "censorship". Private companies have always banned/blocked problematic users. That's not censorship.
- myfavoritedog 5y agoThe issues are conflated because the existing legal framework never accounted for what we have today. It's confusing; and unteasing the concerns to find the primary core principles that should be supported isn't easy. The existing CDA protections that are relied upon by social media giants was originally intended to allow content hosting platforms to manage issues that most everyone agreed upon, like "Content hoster should be allowed to remove explicit porn from their public interest bulletin board" They never realized that social media giants would one day use their content moderation to bend large-scale public opinion to their will on day-to-day political and public health issues. In addition to the overreach of the CDA safe harbor provision are issues of public accommodation, monopoly control of free speech, and in-kind political donations to candidates and parties that bypass existing election finance restrictions.
- jlkuester7 5y agoAgreed. This is not a "free speech" problem that is covered by the First Amendment or anything like that. That being said, I think it is fair to raise some questions when inyalowda decide to enforce their policies in a seemly arbitrary fashion. Trump is toxic and his presence on social media did nothing to raise the intellectual bar of public discourse. But, he is far from the only world leader to share self-serving, destrucive, and misleading propaganda online. Users should demand clear policies and fair universal enforcement from FB.
- ENOTTY 5y agoI'm pretty onboard, but uneasy, with the framing that private entities should have broad discretion to decide how to govern the use of their spaces. But Facebook (and Google, Apple, and many other "platforms") are such an indispensable part of our lives that we should have difficult conversations about what individual rights look like in these quasi-public private spaces. (It's worth noting that the explicit business model of many of these companies is to create gigantic platforms/walled gardens.) I personally do not believe that many of the norms and common law relating to physical public/private spaces should be transferred to the modern age of digital oligopoly.
- gnicholas 5y agoWhy on earth is this not on the front page? It was posted 1 hour ago and has 50 points and 96 comments. If it's being flagged, that's an exercise in futility. The end result is that people don't see it on the front page and keep posting it. Then someone goes into all of those posts and points people to this discussion, which is keeping this discussion alive. But it would be much more efficient if the @dang could just unflag this so the conversation could happen here directly. EDIT: hey flaggers, thanks for the downvotes. Do you have a better suggestion for how to handle this, or do you just think that discussing a major move by one of the largest tech companies on the planet shouldn't happen on HN?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- detaro 5y ago> has 50 points and 96 comments far less points than comments is penalized by the ranking algorithm
- jjgreen 5y agoPlease don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- gnicholas 5y agoI'm aware of the guidelines, thanks. I've been here a while and don't comment on voting often. You'll notice others have commented on this also, which indicates that something strange is happening.
- rvz 5y agoI didn't flag, but it seems that if the orange man's name is mentioned or written on this orange site then it is immediately flagged / downvoted without question. [0] Don't bother asking for a reason or suggestions (They don't have any) I also tried that and they downvoted me to the bottom of the comments section, like this one. Most of them are devoid of reason or having a discussion about Facebook's actions since some of them even work for the tech giant themselves. So in their case, the only 'sensible' action for them to do is to censor, silence or generate a robotic reply to your response. It's natural for them to reject anyone asking too many good questions. [0] Unless if the source is from slatestarcodex. HN loves them. EDIT: Downvoters and Flaggers: Are you going to answer the parent's question or are you proving us both correct with the above claims?
- motohagiography 5y agoI'm not sure the popular objection to this would be that FB is doing it, it is that they say they are doing it based on some kind of objective or at least shared principle and facts, with some kind of negotiable condition, and I think that is what many people would consider outrageous. FB should just say, "we're against him and we're exercising our own discretion and prerogative." The bureaucratic worldivew expressed in press releases like this are what created the populist movement that supported him in the first place. Who cares what oversight process this went through if it is just internal bureaucratic theatre to insulate the individual decision makers, and with no national legitimacy? FB is pretending it doesn't have responsibility for the power it is exercising. Zuckerberg & Co. should just say, "L'internet, c'est moi" and be done with it and try not to contemptibly hide behind words nobody believes. This relentless miasma of bullshit is what people see as totalitarianism, not their coastal opinions.
- jlkuester7 5y agoIt seems like true freedom in digital social discourse is really only attainable via a decentralized system. (Note that I mean "freedom" not only to speak your mind, but also the freedom to not have to listen to someone else speak their mind if you don't want to.) There are plenty of unmoderated cesspools on the internet. There are also plenty of walled-garden centralised social media platforms that enforce their own interpretation of "appropriate" speech. A better solution is one that allows individuals to communicate on a decentralized network by joining a server of their choice (or hosting their own). Then those users/servers can control who they choose to federate with and who they choose to block. Subsidiarity in moderation will yeald the best outcome. This is my I am a big fan of Mastodon! https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/
- jfengel 5y agoAnd it's there. You have it. The ex-President can have it any time he wants, just like his blog. Problem solved.
- the_third_wave 5y ago...until someone upstream from his server decides his content is no longer welcome on the 'net and pulls the server from the rack / drops his network service / drops his name service / refuses to process payment requests / cancels his domain registration / refuses to process mail from his domain / etcetera. Think of how Parler was treated to get an idea of what I mean. Think of that scene in The Matrix where Neo was rhetorically questioned by agent Smith - "What good is a phone call if you are unable to speak?". What good is a platform if you are unable to connect it to the internet?
- petee 5y ago"We're concerned he will encourage violence again, so we banned him" "...But we'll let him try again in 2 years when campaign season starts" So, vague consistency, and no foresight. What could go wrong
- RickJWagner 5y agoSo long as they give similar bans to anyone praising a violent crowd action / riot / civil unrest, then I'm ok with it.
- slumdev 5y agoDon Lemon, Chris Cuomo, and every other stooge who provided rhetorical cover for the BLM riots last year are still enjoying their Facebook accounts, so it doesn't look like the policy is getting applied evenly as you suggest it ought.