![]() ![]() Facebook’s attempt to divert attention from its fundamental failure to take responsibility for what’s on its own platform has itself failed.” “This is a Facebook-funded, Facebook-appointed body that has no legitimacy to make real decisions. “What is the point of the oversight board?” the activist group said. ![]() The Real Oversight Board, a group of activists formed as a critique of Facebook’s oversight board, said members of Facebook’s board should step down from the group “for their own dignity”. The oversight board includes high-profile members, such as the former Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the Columbia law professor Jamal Greene and the former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger. “Given Trump’s history of spreading pandemic disinformation, it’s particularly crucial to deny him a megaphone at a time when we’re still struggling to contain the virus and increase vaccinations.” ![]() The scale of Trump’s coronavirus misinformation makes the decision to remove him particularly important at this moment in the pandemic, said Jessica J González, the co-chief executive officer of the non-profit anti-hate speech organization Free Press. In an analysis of Donald Trump’s posts between 1 January 2020, and 6 January 2021 when he was banned from the platform, the non-profit advocacy group Media Matters for America found that Trump pushed misinformation about Covid-19 and election fraud or violent rhetoric attacking his critics in more than 1,400 separate posts – more than a quarter of his total posts during that period. In addition to the Capitol riot posts that led to the ban, Trump made hundreds of false statements about Covid-19 and other issues, analyses show. “Unless Facebook permanently bans Trump immediately, we will be having this same dramatic sideshow in six months from now,” he added.Īctivists have said Facebook has a responsibility to ban Trump, whose activity on the platform – from lies about the election to calls for violence against peaceful protesters – they say is dangerous to democracy. Now, they’re kicking the can down the road again. “Instead of addressing the core problems in its platform, exploited this fragile moment in our society in order to sell us the fiction of this oversight group,” said Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of Media Matters for America. The ruling announced on Wednesday was watched closely by tech critics and advocates, marking one of the first times such a large tech platform has publicly made a crucial, public decision regarding who gets to use its platform to speak.Īctivists who had discouraged Facebook from allowing the return of the president say the announcement underscores failures of the oversight board, a regulatory group that was formed in 2020 to make decisions independent of Facebook’s corporate leadership. ![]()
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