Liberal groups doubt Meta guardrails for Trump return to platform
Christopher Hutton
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Liberal tech advocacy and speech organizations are skeptical that Meta’s promises to rein in former President Donald Trump in his return to Facebook will work.
A collection of organizations voiced their opposition to the decision Wednesday to allow Trump to return to Facebook and Instagram with guardrails in place to hold him to prevent further violations like the one that led to his two-year ban. They claimed that Meta’s decision could inspire violence and allow the former president to spread false claims online.
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“Meta is moving backwards, returning us to a time when Donald Trump used the company’s powerful tools to spread lies and dangerous rhetoric and incite violence targeted at disenfranchised communities and his ideological enemies,” Jessica González, co-CEO of the media advocacy group Free Press, said in a statement.
González led the Change the Terms coalition, a group of five dozen civil-rights, human-rights, tech-policy, and consumer-protection organizations, which advocated last week for Meta to ban the former president permanently.
Other organizations are more skeptical about the rules that Meta claims it will implement to keep Trump in line. “While Meta has claimed that additional guardrails will be implemented around Trump’s return to Facebook and Instagram, we know that Meta cares more about its profits than a celebrity that boosts engagement, like Trump, following the rules,” said Bridgett Todd, the director of communications for the organization UltraViolet.
“By allowing the former President to remain the center of attention in world-changing debates about content regulation, free speech, and the harms of Big Tech, we’re helping him accomplish his vile goals of silencing and oppressing the most vulnerable,” Fight for the Future director Evan Greer said in a statement.
The American Civil Liberties Union, though, defended Trump’s reinstatement on free-speech grounds. “Like it or not, President Trump is one of the country’s leading political figures, and the public has a strong interest in hearing his speech,” executive director Anthony Romero argued.
Trump’s team had been pushing for Meta to reinstate Trump for his 2024 reelection campaign. While Trump signed a Securities and Exchange Commission filing stating he would give his social network Truth Social priority when it came to posts, he is also considering not renewing the filing. Although Trump was reinstated on Twitter in November 2022, he has not posted there since.
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Trump had previously received a two-year platform ban on Facebook and Instagram, a decision that would eventually be reversed by Facebook’s regulatory body, the Oversight Board.
Trump’s account will be exempt from Meta’s fact-checking efforts because he is a political candidate, according to internal documents. He will be held accountable for his content, however. Clegg emphasized in the blog post that it would consider additional bans on Trump’s account if he spread false information about the 2020 election.