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Facebook Has No Plans To Lift Trump Ban, Report Says (nbcnews.com) 297

Posted by msmash from the breaking-news dept.
Facebook has no plan in place to lift the indefinite suspension on President Donald Trump's Facebook account following his departure from the White House on Wednesday, NBC News reported Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the company's plans said. From the report: The ban on Trump's account remains indefinite, the sources said, and there is no current plan in place to lift it. The social media giant said on Jan. 7 that it would "indefinitely" ban the president's account due to his role in inciting the attack on the U.S. Capitol a day earlier. The company said the ban would last at least through the end of his term. Facebook's suspension stopped short of the permanent ban that other social media companies like Twitter and Snapchat lated placed on Trump's accounts.
UPDATE: CNBC reported two days later that Facebook had announced "it will refer its decision to indefinitely suspend the account of former President Donald Trump to its newly instituted Oversight Board," and it would be that Board which would ultimately make the final determination.

In a blog post, Facebook still that "we hope, given the clear justification for our actions on January 7, that it will uphold the choices we made..."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Facebook Has No Plans To Lift Trump Ban, Report Says More

Facebook Has No Plans To Lift Trump Ban, Report Says

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  • Free market, bitches! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @03:38PM (#60965098)

    Don't like it? Just make your own social network, hosting, payment processor, credit card company, and country!

    • ...with Blackjack, and Hookers!

      In fact, forget the social network, hosting, payment processor, credit card company, and country!

      Yo Grark

    • Be sure to take your fraction of the current country, state, and maybe county or city debt with you wherever you decide to relocate. That's the real tough thing that has to be resolved before any of these nutty secede stances would ever work.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thomn8r ( 635504 )

      Don't like it? Just make your own social network

      With blackjack! And hookers!

    • Re:Free market, bitches! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @05:27PM (#60965672)

      Here's the problem:

      There are alternatives to Facebook that some folks have moved to and guess what's happened ?

      People just demonized them stating they're " havens for conspiracy theory and hate speech " and bitched about it loudly enough that they were removed from service by more than one Tech Giant. ( Apple, Google, Amazon, etc )

      So, regardless if someone started their own Social Media platform, hosting, payment processors, etc. I think the current mob mentality of " If you don't believe the way I do, you're the enemy " will find a way to silence everyone they disagree with.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @03:54PM (#60965178)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • This decision will have a cost, but doing nothing would have also, which will never be known. Politics is definitely making a lot of the social connections on Facebook less enjoyable, but it's unclear how much Facebook can fix that.

      Twitter's dilemma is much greater. I don't think much of the traffic on Facebook is directly attributable to Trump, as it has been on Twitter the last few years.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
      Sounds like what happened in the election, except the loser can't let it go... which basically put him in the position he's in.

      Words and actions have consequences. Elementary age kids learn this lesson.

      If FB did nothing, is that angering the other half of the US? They hedged their bet by assuming many republicans really didn't like Trump but disliked democrats more. And I would say their assumption is correct going by my personal connection to life-long republicans. A few thought Trump was great, ma
    • You try very hard to claim ALL the Republican votes as Trump votes. But the fact is, so many Republicans voted Republican despite Trump not because of Trump.

      90% of the pro Trump noise is made by 10% of the Republicans. As they get held accountable for the noise they make, this will shrink dramatically.

      The Republicans use Fox News to know what line to parrot dutifully. Fox gets sued by Dominion Voting systems, suddenly all the fraud caused by hacked machine noise and chatter goes off the air. Fox paid o [nytimes.com]

    • As I keep saying, nobody seems to hate the right like the right.

      Alienating half of the USA is not a winning marketing strategy.

      The majority of the right are not traitorous insurrection sympathizers, and frankly no one on the left is suggesting it. But it's a really common meme on the right.

    • The question was, which half of the USA were they going to alienate? They decided to go with the smaller half.

    • their friends and families are all still on Facebook. A few of them will try some right wing competitors, but those tend to either censor posts at a very high rate (like Parler) or chock full of actual White Supremacists (like Gab) meaning that nobody likes to hang out on them except a narrow band of users.

      When it comes to social networking Facebook has a lock on the market. Google, with the benefit of it's search empire and billions of dollars couldn't crack that nut. Losing Trump isn't gonna do it.

    • I expect that their reasoning goes something like... after a couple of years of a president that actually acts like a president is expected to, people in the U.S. are likely to move away from the approximate 50/50 split you alude to from the vote. If Biden doesn't spend as much time on the golf course and treats Covid as a real problem, it might even move faster. If you look at the recent presidential approval polls, they are already about there. According to the convenient graphs on fivethirtyeight.com, on

    • BTW Republicans are not "half" of America. Democrats are reliably 33%. Independents bring in another 30%. Republicans are about 25%. The rest are libertarians and other minor parties like Greens.

      Hard core Trump supporters are about 60% of Republicans, or 15% of the country. Usually these are uneducated rural Whites, the spending controlled by them is less than 15% especially in the high margin discretionary spending products. So it is not that big a loss. Facebook knows so much about them, they know preci

    • The interests of the nation winning over the interests of the Zuck? I'm all for it. What took so long, and how can we get more of this?

  • I wouldn't (Score:5, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @03:57PM (#60965194)
    he's brand poison. January 6th has permanently associated Trump with violence and riots in the minds of a lot of Americans. Never mind that the money he brings in isn't going to be anywhere close to the cost of making sure he doesn't set off another violent protest or riot. Even McConnell is now saying Trump provoked violence (albeit likely because McConnell wants to get Trump off the national stage so he can assert power).

    Trump's just not worth the hassle.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Honestly, the only people who actually believe Trump was trying to overthrow the government with his rally are the same people who hated him from the beginning.

      His diehard fans will continue to think that he was the best president ever until their dying day.

  • Trump now irrelevant (Score:3)

    by sit1963nz ( 934837 ) on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @03:59PM (#60965210)
    Trump is now irrelevant, so he can be dumped and the lobbying is shifting elsewhere.

  • Facebook is now the Michael's of Social Media (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KalvinB ( 205500 ) on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @04:01PM (#60965234) Homepage

    Scrapbooking only

    Government speech should only originate through government channels. Private speech should only originate through private channels.

    Government officials relying on Facebook to interact with constituents was a bad idea to begin with. Obama was the first president to use Twitter and that should have been nipped in the bud. Setting up a public platform and whatever else for government officials to post their musing and allow constituents to comment should be an endeavor completely separate of any privately run platforms.

    The government has data retention laws. No doubt nothing of Trump's has actually been deleted, but all that data needs to be handed over to the government to be made available in a static form for historical purposes.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by godrik ( 1287354 )

      Wait, that makes little sense.

      CNN is a private channel. Should politicians never talk to CNN?

      Should the government print their own newspaper? Rather than ask a few national newspaper to print a message that is clearly labeled?

      I suppose they would have to own their own printing press too?

  • *meh* (Score:3)

    by fish_in_the_c ( 577259 ) on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @04:14PM (#60965310)

    I think what apple , Google and Facebook did is 'probably' acceptable, although it proves they should not have section 230 protection.
    I think what Amazon did should be illegal, because they provide infrastructure and have no more business decided what is done with their problem then someone providing sugar to bakeries should have in deciding which cakes are made.

    • I get that you disagree with what they did (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @04:56PM (#60965556)
      but it proves the opposite actually. Without the S230 protections the Government could have forced them to keep Trump online. Effectively removing Apple, Google & Facebook's rights to freedom of association.

      You could argue their a publisher at that point, but they're not really. They aren't the ones publishing the material, Trump is.

      And you can't argue they're a dumb pipe either. Without some form of moderation their products collapse in a wave of trolls and frauds.

      That's what Section 230 is for. The Internet created an entirely new type of Platform. One that wasn't a publisher or a dumb pipe. It was new tech, and new tech often needs new laws. Imagine trying to regulate cars that can hit 80+ MPH with the same laws that applied to horse and buggies. That's what we'll get without S230.

      And you won't like it. It'll be censorship city. Post anything anyone with money doesn't like and just like the DMCA it'll instantly be taken down.

  • Lucky Trump. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 )

    I'm banned too. Because FB thought my real name wasn't real, and demanded a copy of my passport, or of utilities bills, etc. Which does not only break several laws here, but ... fuck that! You get nothing! You loose! Good day!!

    And I can tell you that it was one of the best decisions ever, for my mental health.
    Much happier since then. And not dragged back and down to what "friends" think I am or was.

    I can only think that it will do Trump good, to focus on real humans around him, and not feed his narcissim. B

  • A reporter has compiled a list of all the insults [nytimes.com] hurled by Trump on Twitter.

    A truly historical list, will be pored over by historians over the coming decades.

    I recall an entomologist saying in NPR, "You can't hassle an ant. I set up [something that attracted ants] and laid a paper in the way. Got an ant to walk across the paper sheet towards bait. Just as it reached the end, turned it around, and it walked all the way across again. Repeated it some 200 times, the ant never gave up. I eventually gave

  • The first president to have received a perma ban on Facebook.

  • What's the point of virtue signaling if everyone sees you stop?

  • 4+ years of free speech (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adfraggs ( 4718383 ) on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @06:35PM (#60965972)

    Have people completely lost the context on this? Trump said pretty much whatever he wanted on Facebook and Twitter for his entire term and during the lead up campaign. He hasn't been banned because they don't like his views, if that was true it would have happened a long time ago. He is banned because he finally said things so dumb and irresponsible that it led to real harm, the loss of actual lives and threatened to undermine the very fabric of democracy. At the time he was banned he seemed to have no intention of changing that behaviour and allowing him to continue could have caused additional serious harm. Being banned was one of a series of reprimands that finally forced him to stop. He lost the support of his staff, some of his political allies and his various backers AND he lost the support of these platforms. In each case, they did the right thing and the President was arm wrestled back to some degree of sanity. Who is to honestly say they know what he would have continued to do, what damage he would have continued to cause if any of those reprimands had been withheld?

  • We Have a Whole Different Set of Problems Now (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CoolDiscoRex ( 5227177 ) on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @10:37PM (#60966572) Homepage

    47 federal officials have been convinced of corruption offenses in the USA.

    28 were Democrats (60%)
    19 were Republicans (40%)

    All of the big tech CEOs, plus the majority of establishment media are on the side of the Democrats. So too, ostensibly, are affluent, white, college-educated American adults. These groups are rejoicing because their preferred candidate becomes President tomorrow, and this new presidency will be accompanied by a media that will obligingly look the other way when instructed to do so.

    I didn't vote for Trump. In fact, I'm more liberal than the vast majority of people who call themselves liberal. Yet, I feel very uneasy about the upcoming administration, which is, at the end of the day, no less beholden to large corporations than Republicans. See, it's much better to have a President that is hated by the media, academia, and corporate elites. They will study that President's every move and hold him under a microscope for every millisecond of their presidency.

    When it's someone they like, however, this scrutiny suddenly becomes somewhat deaf, dumb, and blind, and this allows all manners of corruption and shenanigans to take place, with those who notice being labelled "crazy", "conspiracy theorists", etc. Furthermore, the conformist mob of bandwagon followers will only clutch their pearls and have a moral panic attack only when instructed to do so by the party deciders. No matter how heinous the act, unless there' sa bandwagon of outrage to jump on, most "progressives" will spend their time looking for impure "others" at whom to wag a finder, as self-critique is grounds for excommunication and cancellation.

    We should all feel some degree of discomfort when someone the 4th Estate approves of moves into the White House. If you think the de-platforming of a couple of Americans at the behest of a political party is bad, you haven't seen anything yet.

    Freedom, tolerance, and transparency will not follow. If you believe nothing else I've ever said, believe that.

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