We will be wading into these very complex issues.Facebook spied on private messages of Americans who questioned 2020 election They have a blog, they have press statements the press covers them. “There's also a very good argument to be made that an elected official has other ways to communicate without using social media.
“There's also a strong value within Facebook - I think I think many Americans probably agree with this - that we want to know what our elected officials are saying,” Wolbers said. But that’s also a big part of why Facebook created the Oversight Board in the first place - to delegate the most difficult decisions to an “independent” organization. The board’s ruling will be controversial regardless of what it decides, and could have far-reaching implications for all politicians that use the social network. Of course, the issues surrounding the Trump decision are even more contentious than rules around nudity or health misinformation. The company also agreed to make its policies around health misinformation more clear, which resulted in more specific vaccine misinformation rules. Notably, it changed Instagram’s rules to allow for “health-related nudity,” as a result of a case involving a post about breast cancer awareness. And while Facebook isn’t required to implement those changes, it is required to issue a response to the suggestions and explain its position.įor example, after the first round of ruling and policy recommendations from the Oversight Board, Facebook ended up agreeing to several changes. In addition to ruling on individual content moderation issues, it also has the ability to recommend broader policy changes to Facebook. That approach is in line with previous decisions made by the Oversight Board. And so we will be looking at some of these nuanced policies.” No, he's no longer an elected official, but should he decide to run again for office, he would then be elevated into that elected official category. “So there is an interesting thought right now with the Donald Trump account. “What's really interesting… you start to become an elected official once you've filed paperwork to run for office,” Wolbers said of Facebook’s rules. While it’s not clear which aspects of these policies may be addressed by the Oversight Board, Wolbers suggested the group does plan to address the question of whether Trump should be allowed back on Facebook if he runs for office again. And in the past, Facebook has cited “newsworthiness” as a reason for allowing Trump and other politicians to make statements that would otherwise break its rules. For example, statements from politicians are exempt from the company’s fact-checking policies. Not now Turn on Turned on Turn onįacebook provides special consideration to the accounts of elected officials. You can disable notifications at any time in your settings menu. And then we will also be looking at the world leaders policy … It's actually an elected officials policy, it applies the same, from the President of the United States to your local school board official.” “First, we're looking at that binary issue… whether the account should stay down, or if we should reinstate former President Donald Trump's public page. “When Facebook referred this case to us, there are really two issues,” Wolbers said. The comments, which come ahead of the official decision that’s expected in the coming weels, offers additional insight on how the board views its most high-profile case yet. Speaking on a panel at SXSW, Rachel Wolbers, public policy manager for the Oversight Board, said that in addition to the “binary” decision about whether or not to reinstate Trump's account, the board will also look at Facebook’s policies around elected officials more broadly. As Facebook’s “Supreme Court” gets ready to rule on whether Donald Trump’s suspension should be permanent, the board will also tackle some of the thornier policy issues about how Facebook handles the accounts of elected officials.