Re:Facebook's Trump ban upheld by Oversight Board, for now
by ineedasername on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:04PM
(#27054965)
They did their job, which is basically to determine if FB has correctly applied its policies particularly in the context of freedom of expression. It's a ruling that took 2 parts: 1) The initial decision to ban was okay but 2) The "indefinite" part was too ambiguous without reference to specific FB policies and so they must reinstate Trump's account or to provide concrete policies to justify its actions within 6 months (which I would agree is too long)
This is no different than any other appeals court, at least in the US: An appeals court can rule for/against something but it can also push the case back to those who made the initial ruling and force them to reconsider.
This doesn't even mean that FB is going to be the final decision maker here: After FB makes their case (if they decide to do so) for a perma-ban, the board can then review that and make a final decision on whether FB's application of policy in this case. All they're saying is FB did not provide that justification initially and must now do so.
This is the way systems of justice typically work. It is not a one-time binary decision. It is an iterative process refining the legal (or rules-based) question to hone in the core of the issue.
Did the board have the authority to make the ban permanent? Sure. Should they have done so? Absolutely not. It would set a bad precedent for them to allow FB to get away with decisions on the basis of vague justifications. It's forcing FB to support its decisions with specific references to its policies. In the short term that probably feels unsatisfying to anyone looking to end this saga one way or another, but in the long term it is telling FB it can't make arbitrary decisions unsupported by its own policies.
The only thing I disagree with is that 6 months is really much longer than required for this. FB has had plenty of time on this issue, they shouldn't need more than a few weeks to get this done.
This is no different than any other appeals court, at least in the US: An appeals court can rule for/against something but it can also push the case back to those who made the initial ruling and force them to reconsider.
This doesn't even mean that FB is going to be the final decision maker here: After FB makes their case (if they decide to do so) for a perma-ban, the board can then review that and make a final decision on whether FB's application of policy in this case. All they're saying is FB did not provide that justification initially and must now do so.
This is the way systems of justice typically work. It is not a one-time binary decision. It is an iterative process refining the legal (or rules-based) question to hone in the core of the issue.
Did the board have the authority to make the ban permanent? Sure. Should they have done so? Absolutely not. It would set a bad precedent for them to allow FB to get away with decisions on the basis of vague justifications. It's forcing FB to support its decisions with specific references to its policies. In the short term that probably feels unsatisfying to anyone looking to end this saga one way or another, but in the long term it is telling FB it can't make arbitrary decisions unsupported by its own policies.
The only thing I disagree with is that 6 months is really much longer than required for this. FB has had plenty of time on this issue, they shouldn't need more than a few weeks to get this done.