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Trump Will Remain Off Facebook For At Least Two Years (politico.com) 244

Facebook announced Friday that former President Donald Trump's account will remain suspended for at least two years, setting a timetable for his potential return after its oversight board criticized the company's indefinite ban. From a report: "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," Facebook's vice president of global affairs Nick Clegg said in a blog post. "We are suspending his accounts for two years, effective from the date of the initial suspension on January 7 this year." The social media giant said after that period it would evaluate whether "the risk to public safety has receded," and make a call on his possible reinstatement.
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Trump Will Remain Off Facebook For At Least Two Years

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  • by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @12:37PM (#61454576)

    They should kick EVERYONE off Facebook for 2 years. Would be a great improvement to society.

    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @02:17PM (#61454984)

      Define society. I believe underground music and comedy scenes are part of society and they would be completely demolished by this with whole generations not entire sure of how to find local gigs without it.
      Then there's a whole lot of us who moved to other countries who find a social network quite convenient for keeping up with friends (actual friends) back home, and Facebook can go on a baby murdering spree but I'd still consider it better than writing shitty postcards. Remember postcards, and mail? There's little alternative to keeping up with large groups of people.

      Facebook isn't all about arguing with anti-vaxxers and Trump apologists, and if you find the content on the site not to your liking, maybe that's the company you keep rather than a problem with Facebook itself.

      • Except he said "Facebook", not "the Internet".
        • I know what he said. You seem to have a strange view of the way people use "the Internet". Quite specifically the things I mentioned are not on "the Internet". They are relegated to small corners of highly popular social media. Tearing one down without first building another ends up being devastating to those who have built literally a way of doing business around those platforms. Just because there's still an Internet after Facebook doesn't make this less painful.

      • by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Define society. I believe underground music and comedy scenes are part of society and they would be completely demolished by this with whole generations not entire sure of how to find local gigs without it.
        Then there's a whole lot of us who moved to other countries who find a social network quite convenient for keeping up with friends (actual friends) back home, and Facebook can go on a baby murdering spree but I'd still consider it better than writing shitty postcards. Remember postcards, and mail? There's little alternative to keeping up with large groups of people.

        Facebook isn't all about arguing with anti-vaxxers and Trump apologists, and if you find the content on the site not to your liking, maybe that's the company you keep rather than a problem with Facebook itself.

        This.

        Facebook is the ultimate echo chamber, those people arguing with anti-vaxxers are doing it entirely out of their own violation.

        I simply block the crap I don't like an unfriend the people that keep posting it. I'd rather have 40 good people who make me laugh and think than 400 scum that just end up annoying the living shit out of me. Facebook is meant to be about friends right, not connecting with anyone you have the tiniest interaction with.

        My facebook is mostly full of jokes, memes and gener

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      You mean forever.

  • Some context... (Score:5, Informative)

    by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @12:38PM (#61454582)

    Some important context: Trump has been pressing forward with a rumor that he'd be 'reinstated' in August. If my Facebook feed is any indication, people are starting to fall for it. After what happened in January there are definitely some valid concerns.

    • I loathe that fucker, but you have to wonder how much of what we read is true and how much not true. Does he really believe that, or is it made up shit the media is running with because it conforms to our preconceptions? At this stage I'd probably have to hear him say it himself to 100% believe it. Not that he's not a delusional, narcissistic lunatic - it's just that this recent bit of news about him thinking he'll be back in office soon is a *bit* too much on the nose.

      • The story I heard (take with a grain of salt...) is that the My Pillow guy said to Trump that he'd be 'reinstated' in August and Trump has been running with it ever since.

        • Yeah, if you're taking constitutional legal advice and predictions from a guy who runs a company that makes pillows from shredded foam, you're probably not getting the best advice.

          Just saying.

          • Re:Some context... (Score:4, Informative)

            by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @01:53PM (#61454868)

            Don’t forget he was a former crackhead, not even joking.

          • by gtall ( 79522 )

            The former alleged president does not believe in experts, they know more than he. So he goes with whatever moron at his level tells him something that he likes. That strategy works until the adults call him on it. Then he blusters and blows and declares whomever the adults are, that they have a vendetta against him. You can always predict his behavior if you consider he has the emotional age of a 13 year old who constantly is amazed at himself.

        • Re:Some context... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Quantum gravity ( 2576857 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @01:56PM (#61454888)

          “In an interview with The Daily Beast, the controversial pillow mogul explained that recent comments from the former president at his Mar-a-Lago resort suggesting that he could be “reinstated”may actually stem from Lindell himself.

          “If Trump is saying August, that is probably because he heard me say it publicly,” Mr Lindell said.

          https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]

      • This rumor about Trump being reinstated started in the QAnon circles and elsewhere, and I think Trump is just picking it up from there and repeating it. Sidney "clown school dropout" Powell was definitely stating this earlier, except her time line sounded like June and not August. Mike Pillow was muttering something about it too. We're definitely hitting peak self-delusion levels.

        • by gtall ( 79522 )

          The old game of the former alleged president's White House team was to seed conservative mouthpieces with whatever ideas they wanted reflected back to them so they could then announce that "people are talking about X". It's an even older game. A great example is in the movie Soapdish when Sally Field needs a pickme and has Woopie Goldberg loudly wonder if that is "she" on the escalator.

          Nothing about the former alleged president is real, he's an entire Potemkin village on two legs.

      • You might get your chance to hear the full-on delusion live - he's going to be doing stupid rallies again this summer, and you already know he's going to sit there and pump out salty purple piss over the 2020 election. After all, he can't be seen as a loser, so he needs to try to frame it in any way he can as being stolen from him.

        • I'm here for it. I can't wait, at this point it's just a show, a joke. My life didn't get especially better or especially worse due to anything Trump or Obama did, and I doubt it will under Biden either. Fuck it, we're all femtosecond blips of sentient, meaningless matter in the span of an infinite universe in both time and space, at least keep me entertained.

          Watching the absolute idiocy of Trump and his circus on one side and the only slightly less lunacy of the far left on the other side battle each other

          • I'm here for it. I can't wait, at this point it's just a show, a joke. My life didn't get especially better or especially worse due to anything Trump or Obama did, and I doubt it will under Biden either. Fuck it, we're all femtosecond blips of sentient, meaningless matter in the span of an infinite universe in both time and space, at least keep me entertained.

            Following Trump's insanity is pretty entertaining, but do keep in mind that there are actual people (LGBTQ, minorities, immigrants) whose lives are significantly impacted by that shit.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        He's only saying that because his blog was a complete flop and closed after a couple of months, and now he has realized that he needs Facebook more than Facebook needs him.

        He always does this. Make something up about a thing he wants to happen, and then let his loyalists get outraged when it doesn't happen, even though it was never going to happen. Then Facebook has an angry mob coming at them. Unfortunately for him I doubt Facebook cares either way, it's all more engagement to them.

      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        Remember who you are talking about, the former alleged president "believing" anything is a non-sequitur given his past behavior. He operates on the basic principle of throwing his food against the wall to see what sticks. Then he points to the bits that stick and declares himself a genius for throwing that particular bit.

    • About half of the Always-Trumpers on my friends list left Facebook for good. The other half left and gave a "I'm leaving you should come with me" but came back again (possibly it was a desert out there, or the spouse stepped in and said "no!").

      But in general the Trumpist rhetoric on my Facebook feed died almost to zero after Jan 6th. I think the really hardcore stolen-election types are the ones who didn't slink back to Facebook and are off on Parler wondering where everyone is. Now it's back to normal w

      • But in general the Trumpist rhetoric on my Facebook feed died almost to zero after Jan 6th. I think the really hardcore stolen-election types are the ones who didn't slink back to Facebook and are off on Parler wondering where everyone is.

        Maybe they shut up about it because their coup failed, but over 60% of self-identified republicans still think Biden stole the election. https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
        That's frankly insanely high

    • Re:Some context... (Score:5, Informative)

      by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @01:32PM (#61454796) Journal

      What's even more hilarious about that, is that there is absolutely zero mechanism in Federal law to make that happen unless a Constitutional amendment happens, and you can guess what the probability of that is, with a Democrat holding the gavel in the House, and a Democrat in the Majority Leader office in the Senate.

      The States ratified their election outcomes.
      The Congress ratified the States' outcomes, and ratified the electoral tallies.
      Biden is President until January 2025, with an option on 4 more years. And that's the end of the god damn story.

    • by v1 ( 525388 )

      He's just trying to milk the cow a bit more, get more donations from the suckers that think it's going to anything political and not just into his wallet.

      But yeah, people in positions of power or authority should be upheld to a higher standard than the average person anyway. 2 years is an awful light sentence IMO. I'd like to see it 5, keep him gagged past the next election. Although I suspect that is the actual reason the ban is set for only 2 years, they want to give him a chance to use FB for the 2024

    • Didn't Trump start his own Social Media site? Oh yeah, it fell apart just like everything else he ever touched.
  • by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @12:40PM (#61454590)
    You can incite your followers to attack democratic institutions & elected citizens, praise the attackers during and after the fact as well as saying a bunch of other nasty hatemongering & racist shit and Facebook will give you a tap on the wrist. A tap on the wrist that will expire conveniently just in time for the next presidential election where Facebook stands to greatly profit.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      For me the worst part was seeing him watching the rioters on TV, waiting to see if they were successful in murdering his opponents and delaying Biden's confirmation before making a statement.

      He learned how to play them. Set them off but disavow when it all goes horribly wrong. Use the mildest condemnation possible so that they think he's still playing the long game and not really turning on them. Happened at Charlottesville too, the far right took his extremely half hearted criticism and attempt at a "both

    • by leonbev ( 111395 )

      My making him wait two years, isn't Facebook basically forcing Trump and his followers to set up shop at a competing platform like Parler?

      Politics aside, this probably isn't a popular business decision for them. They're already struggling to further grow the business as it is, and this will just drive hardcore conservatives away from the platform. Everyone else who wants a Facebook or Instagram account already has one at this point, and their new business ventures like VR haven't been very popular so far.

  • Really Facebook - you think you're so great because you banned him after he lost the legal capability of retaliation?

    It's closing the door after the horse has bolted and all that. All that sweet advertising cash decided to go away if he stayed, probably - rather than risk being associated with Trumpist rhetoric.

    I think, you want to position yourself like a toll-road operator. If that truck's carrying bread, beer, sex dolls or trafficked children - it's not your gig. After watching the last four years or mor

  • Trump Trump Trump (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @12:46PM (#61454616) Journal

    Do we really have to keep him on the front page every day? I was kinda hoping he was voted out so we could forget about him.. No such luck, eh? Maybe it's all part of his '24 campaign, and all the coverage is absolutely free.. Gotta admit, that's something..

    • Overall, Trump coverage is way way down from a year ago, which we should all be thankful for.

    • Sadly, no.

      While I personally think there are far better GOP candidates for the 2024 election, a recent drive through rural PA showed no shortage of "Trump 2024" flags already on lawns. At least some on the right are looking forward to him running again.

      However, they're not the reason why Trump continues to end up in the news.

      CNN lost over half its viewership once Biden took office, MSNBC similarly had a drop. Media outlets catering to a left-leaning viewership had a near infinite source of outrage porn they

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's a shame they didn't ban him for 5 years, long enough to make sure he doesn't use Facebook in his 2024 campaign.

      You know he's going to try it. Campaigning is a big money-maker for him, even if he doesn't win.

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @12:48PM (#61454624)

    As far as I know, there are plenty of people who have done far less and been permanently banned. Nobody should get special treatment.

  • In all seriousness, it would be better if we just suspended Facebook itself for two years.
  • What would be helpful is after he has served his sentence, that for some time after he is allowed back on, that all his posts be delayed for a day (or longer) after posting, before anyone can see them. This would provide a period of reflection, during which he could delete or amend them and also would lessen their power by reducing their immediacy.

    In fact, it might make FB more usable and less hostile if everyone's posts were delayed for 24 hours before being published.

  • by DeplorableCodeMonkey ( 4828467 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @01:43PM (#61454834)

    You have tons of politicians who've called for radicalism and flirted with violence just as much as Trump has. Maxine Waters is a great example. She's repeatedly told supporters to seek out, confront and get aggressive and confrontational with Trump supporters. The riots last year were a gold mine of "I'm not saying I support the violence, but I'm not saying the violence is actually bad either" tweets from prominent politicians.

    Of course, none of them are going to get banned which is precisely why there is a growing hatred of S230. Sites like Facebook and Twitter should not have the freedom from legal liability when their moderation policies are so obviously broken. You can find tons of examples of them showing favoritism and allowing violation of their rules from "the right people." That behavior from a set of use case monopolies is more societally dangerous than having the federal courts be the final arbiter of whether or not they properly enforced their rules on appeal. It's THAT behavior which causes people on the losing side to say "playing by the rules makes you a sucker."

    • She's repeatedly told supporters to seek out, confront and get aggressive and confrontational with Trump supporters.

      Did she repeatedly post that on her Facebook page? Being a raging thunderc**t is all good and fine, but unless you actually act that way on your Facebook feed directly you're not violating ToS.

      I think a lot of politicians should be booted off Twitter, but really the overwhelming majority of them only use Facebook to run ads, and instead spread their hatred and bullshit on Twitter.

  • Time for "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump," v2.0

  • The social media giant said after that period it would evaluate whether "the risk to public safety has receded,"

    Will they also evaluate whether the Sun will continue rising in the east and setting in the west?

  • Trump is so dumb, and so plainly says what should be understood but not said. Makes everyone see how bad and horrible the rank and file of the Republican party is.

    Others, well coached and saying sound bites, well mediated through Fox News are every bit as dangerous and anti democratic, anti American like Trump. But not overtly and obviously so.

    Take Trump away, Republicans will be back with their shell game and play rope the dope with America and the Democrats.

  • 2 years would be just as the 2024 campaign season is starting to get underway.

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