On Friday, Facebook announced that it would maintain the suspension of former President Donald Trump’s social media account for two more years.
Trump‘s account will still e suspended until January 2023, but Facebook said he could return if he stopped committing ‘violations’.
Mark Zuckerberg gave Trump what he says was Facebook’s ‘highest penalty’ after the Oversight Board criticized the indefinite ban after the Capitol riot.
Trump did not take this lightly and responded first with a strong statement.
“Next time I’m in the White House there will be no more dinners, at his request, with Mark Zuckerberg and his wife,” Trump wrote in a statement from his ‘Save America’ PAC. “It will be all business!”
The ex-POTUS blasted out his response via email, with Facebook and Twitter bans both in effect.
Facebook issued a detailed statement on Friday explaining the reason for continuing the suspension while acknowledging the internal criticism that an ‘open-ended’ suspension left Trump in limbo.
In May, the board upheld the ban but threw the decision back to the Facebook executives to decide on the length of the suspension.
The decision came following the company’s Oversight Board announcement in January that it had suspended the former president’s Facebook and Instagram accounts but had failed to provide an end date.
Now, the new statement acknowledged that a permanent ban was an option ‘if Mr. Trump commits further violations’ of its policies in the future.’
The company also stated that its Oversight Board had ‘criticized the open-ended nature of the suspension, stating that “it was not appropriate for Facebook to impose the indeterminate and standardless penalty of indefinite suspension.”‘
Trump initially responded to the decision with an angry statement, where he once again claimed that the election ‘rigged’.
“Facebook’s ruling is an insult to the record-setting 75M people, plus many others, who voted for us in the 2020 Rigged Presidential Election,” Trump wrote. “They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing, and ultimately, we will win. Our country can’t take this abuse anymore!”
Trump gathered 74 million votes in the national popular vote, while Biden had 81 million.
Trump ultimately lost to Biden in the Electoral College, which determines the winner of the presidency.
Facebook’s statement mentioned the ‘gravity’ of the conduct that got Trump suspended.
The company statement also stated the ‘acts of incitement’, referencing Trump’s comments during the January 6th Capitol riot, when Congress met to certify the electoral votes.
“Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr. Trump’s suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols,” the statement reads, authored by Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg.
“We are suspending his accounts for two years, effective from the date of the initial suspension on January 7 this year,” the statement said.
This means that the ban will remain through the 2022 off-year elections where Trump is seeking to play a significant role. However, if he abides by the rules, he could once again use the platform.
“We are today announcing new enforcement protocols to be applied in exceptional cases such as this, and we are confirming the time-bound penalty consistent with those protocols which we are applying to Mr. Trump’s accounts,” the company said.
“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, up to and including permanent removal of his pages and accounts.”
“In establishing the two-year sanction for severe violations, we considered the need for it to be long enough to allow a safe period of time after the acts of incitement, to be significant enough to be a deterrent to Mr. Trump and others from committing such severe violations in future, and to be proportionate to the gravity of the violation itself.”