To The Facebook Oversight Board [View all]

[ancianita]

To The Facebook Oversight Board --

Afia Asantewaa Asare-Kyei
Evelyn Awad
Endy Bayuni
Catalina Botero-Marino
Katherine Chen
Nighat Dad
Jamal Greene
Tawakkol Karman
Maina Kiai
Sudhir Krishnaswamy
Ronaldo Lemos
Michael McConnell
Suzanne Nossel
Julie Owono
Emi Palmor
Alan Rusbridger
Andras Sajo
John Samples
Nicolas Suzor
Helle Thorning-Schmidt

When you 'rule' on whether Donald Trump can rejoin Facebook, remember that it is public knowledge in the U.S. that

-- during Trump's presidency you allowed him to break your Terms of Service countless times without suspending him;
-- during his presidency you allowed him to post fundraising issues to solicit followers' donations;
-- from Nov 4 2020 until Jan 6 you allowed his 2000+ posts to claim that the 2020 election was stolen, which led to his 'friends' storming the U.S. Capitol on his behalf on Jan 6 to literally stop Congress from certifying America's popular and electoral vote;
-- you only suspended him when other platforms banned him for life;
-- he will use Facebook to post the same claims again;
-- you routinely suspend U.S. citizens for posts that don't adhere to your never-defined "Community" or its "Standards," suspensions that you base on other posters' "reports", with many suspensions lasting for at least a month at a time.


If you decide, one day short of four months of his attempt to delegitimize the election and incite seditious insurrection on Congress, that Trump may rejoin Facebook, you have shown that you are not a neutral platform in

-- your disregard for abuse of the First Amendment, since you would continue to allow a public figure to repeatedly yell "fire" in your platform theater when other platforms do not,
-- your accommodation of fake covid claims and fake covid cure claims,
-- your disregard for his followers to call their fellow Americans, once again, liars in their votes,
— your platform's support for his disproven claims about being elected "by a landslide" when other platforms do not,
-- your allowing his followers a platform to repeat his lies about popular vote fraud,
— your disregard for his and his believers’ predictable repeating of lies that Joe Biden's presidency is illegitimate,
— allowing him and his believers' continued poisoning of truthful public knowledge that Joe Biden is the legitimate president through their fellow Americans' popular vote (81+ million) and Electoral College votes,
-- your continued disregard for continued poisoning of democratic discourse that continues to cry "fire" on your platform,
-- your accommodation of debunked inflammatory conspiracist claims,
— your trustworthiness in promoting "community standards"
-- your pro-Trumpism,
-- your anti-democracy stance,
-- corporate disregard for who and what secures or endangers Americans' freedoms and democracy.


If you rule that Trump can rejoin Facebook, you, more than any social media platform, will prove that Facebook is not to be trusted by at least 81 million Americans who have the common sense to know factual truth from lies. You will prove to be unwilling to learn from history. As the boycotts continue against American companies, I'll be among the Americans who close their Facebook accounts, and you'll likely become Parler lite.