Who should control big tech platforms?
Facebook has removed an interview with ex-president Donald Trump from the account of Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law and a contributor at Murdoch-owned conservative-leaning Fox News, and thereby once again started a new discussion about who should regulate the big tech platforms.
Facebook’s Oversight Board is in the near future expected to publish its evaluation of the closing of Trump’s account on Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram.
The board has been asked to decide if it was correct of Facebook to close the accounts following the violent storming of the US Capitol on January 6 after Trump had made statements urging his supporters to fight what he claims was unfair vote counting that made him loose the presidential election to Joe Biden.
The Board comprises by a number of externally recruited personalities from media, politics and academia. Mark Zuckerberg has defended the company’s decision to stop Trumps’ accounts at that time saying:
“We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”
FACEBOOK’s MOTIVATION
The removing of the Donald Trump interview from the account of Lara Trump, who is married to Donald Trump’s son Eric, was by Facebook motivated in an email saying:
“In line with the block we placed on Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, further content posted in the voice of Donald Trump will be removed and result in additional limitations on the accounts.”
In another email shared by Lara Trump on her Facebook page, Facebook said the guidance applied to all campaign accounts, messaging vehicles and former Trump surrogates on the site.
THE BOARD’s MISSION
Lara Trump instead posted the interview she had made for her own online show ‘The Right View’ on the video platform Rumble and linked to it from her Facebook page. On her Instagram account she wrote:
“And just like that, we are one step closer to Orwell’s 1984. Wow.”
At the Facebook Oversight Board’s website, its background is described:
”As its community grew to more than 2 billion people, it became increasingly clear to the Facebook company that it shouldn’t be making so many decisions about speech and online safety on its own. The Oversight Board was created to help Facebook answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression online: what to take down, what to leave up, and why.”
”The board uses its independent judgment to support people’s right to free expression and ensure those rights are being adequately respected. The board’s decisions to uphold or reverse Facebook’s content decisions will be binding, meaning Facebook will have to implement them, unless doing so could violate the law.”
WIDE IMPACT
The board’s upcoming decision concerning the indefinite blocking of Donald Trump’s accounts will for sure have an impact wider than the Trump accounts and will be analyzed both by social media operators and politicians discussing who should supervise the increasing power of big tech platforms and social media. The board’s conclusions will go far beyond Trump and set a global precedent for the policies and enforcement actions the company makes going forward.
Who should control the power of the big platforms? Can Mark Zuckerberg and his platform colleagues or governments really be trusted to do that?
DIGITAL MARKET ACT
The European Union is discussing these issues saying that the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act will encompass a single set of new rules applicable across the whole EU. ”They will create a safer and more open digital space, with European values at its centre.”
As part of the European Digital Strategy, Shaping Europe’s Digital Future, the European Commission has proposed two legislative initiatives: the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
The DSA and DMA have two main goals, according to the commission:
- to create a safer digital space in which the fundamental rights of all users of digital services are protected
- to establish a level playing field to foster innovation, growth, and competitiveness, both in the European Single Market and globally
ACCOUNTS RETURNED?
Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s Twitter account was also permanently blocked and his YouTube account was blocked with the company saying it could be reinstated when the risk of violence decreases.
As for Facebook, judging from the mission statement for its Oversight Board, it cannot be excluded that Facebook and Instagram would open Trump’s accounts again.
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