Trump, Facebook and the longer goodbye

AT FIRST BLUSH, it read like a corporate reaction to a dangerous force of nature, or a response to some other clear and present danger. On June 4, Facebook announced its extending of the suspension of former president Donald Trump’s social-media account until at least January 2023. 

In a blog post, Facebook said it will only reinstate the former president’s social media presence if “the risk to public safety has receded,” the kind of phrase you’d expect from FEMA officials in the aftermath of a hurricane. 

While we might expect Facebook’s decision to resonate widely in social and political circles, and even though the decision on Trump was part of a wider policy governing behavior of public figures, it’s hard not to believe that Trump’s comments fomenting the violence of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection wasn’t first among numerous reasons for Facebook’s decision. 

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We all know Trump’s been eager to return to the social mediasphere. After Trump’s comments on Jan. 6, the former president was blocked from Facebook, You Tube, Snapchat and – unkindest cut – Twitter, for exercising his vein-popping brand of social media. 

Before his bad behavior came to a head, Trump was a fixture of daily life on Twitter, his social megaphone of choice. Afterward, he endured his exile from social media gamely, for a while. CNN reported that Jared Kushner, Trump son-in-law, advised against Trump going to other conservative media platforms like Parler and Gab – a move that would have secured the former president an instant audience on a platform he didn’t have to build from scratch himself. 

The May launch of the From the Desk of Donald J. Trump blog page -- a project whose name managed to sounds avuncular and imperious at the same time -- indicated how far he was prepared to go to get back in the game. It had promise: His Trumpiness weighing in with his trademark pithy opinions and rhetorical indictments of those outside the church – all of it tailored to the 70-odd million people who voted for him in 2020. 

They pumped it up the best they could. Jason Miller, a longtime Trump adviser, tweeted about a Trump portal set to precede the actual social-media site: “President Trump’s website is a great resource to find his latest statements and highlights from his first term in office, but this is not a new social media platform. We’ll have additional information coming on that front in the very near future.”

 
THE COLLAPSE of the blog-page project on June 2 -- 29 days after it started -- points to how far he has to go to find a platform big enough to contain his ego. Facebook’s continued resistance to his reappearance on its platform indicates an understanding of both Trump’s increasing desperation, and its own willingness to push back on the historical entitlement of the presidential office. 

The threshold shouldn’t be hard to determine: Trump shouldn’t be allowed to get away with any more, or less, on Facebook than any other ordinary citizen. Full stop. The fact of his being the 45th president of the United States shouldn’t be the thumb-on-the-scale factor that mitigates on his behalf. Nor should any reflexive invocation of the First Amendment as a defense for shouting fire in a crowded theater (while bringing in the gasoline and matches). 

The American public didn’t tip its hand for Facebook on how to handle Trump in the future. In April, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center released a report that found an almost-even split between those who want Trump reinstated and those who don’t. 

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It’s a gut-check moment for the Facebook Oversight Board. With the June 4 decision, the independent 20-member panel created by Facebook has proven it has the courage to make a decision that rightly disregards the trappings of office and the mesmerizing power of celebrity. Now comes the board’s next challenge: sticking to its ethical guns as political pressure increases. Which it certainly will, the closer we get to the 2022 election. 

Facebook isn’t imposing a penalty on Trump that hasn’t been imposed by others. But Facebook’s footprint, and imprint, is bigger than the others. With almost 3.5 billion users around the world, Facebook isn’t so much a social network as it is a social utility, ubiquitous and inescapable. That fact elevates the need for vigilance of its users and what they create. 

That’s what makes the decision by the company’s oversight board so important, now and in the future. The board understands that Trump’s use of his status as a former president as a basis for social-media reinstatement shouldn’t in and of itself be enough to justify special favors. With democracy hanging in the balance, the board decided something that was obvious all along: The rhetoric in Donald Trump’s posts and public commentary deserved to be subject to the same scrutiny – and the same penalty for violation – as anyone else.

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Image credits: Facebook logo: Facebook. Trump: Reuters/Joshua Roberts. Pew Research Center logo: Pew Research Center for People and the Press.