Four months after the suspension of his account, will Donald Trump again be able to post on Facebook? The supervisory board of the social media giant must decide on this thorny subject and make a decision that testifies to the immense political power of the dominant platforms.
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Expected Wednesday around 1 p.m., the verdict will undoubtedly be the most important announcement of this body since it took office.
“The board’s reasoning may well help shape the rules of Facebook and other digital networks on how to treat political leaders and other figures in the future,” said Elizabeth Renieris, director of the ethics division. technologies at Notre Dame University.
Proof of the exceptional nature of this judgment, the supervisory board decided in mid-April to postpone the deadline on which it intended to rule, after having received more than 9,000 responses for a call for public comments, promising to examine them all ” meticulously ”.
” Until further notice ”
Facebook banned the former US president from its platform on January 7, the day after the Capitol invasion in Washington, by a crowd of its supporters, during the certification of the victory of Joe Biden in the election of November 2020 .
The Californian group believes that the Republican billionaire broke his rules on incitement to violence, including in a video where he expressed his support for the rioters.
Social network boss Mark Zuckerberg said Mr. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were blocked “until further notice.” At the end of January, Facebook turned to its supervisory board to decide this case definitively.
Sometimes compared to Facebook’s “Supreme Court” and described as “independent” by the company, which funds it to the tune of $ 130 million, this body has the power to confirm or overturn contested decisions of moderation. contents.
Currently composed of 20 international members, including journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders and former politicians, at the beginning of the year it delivered its first (binding) verdicts and issued a series of recommendations ( non-binding).
In Mr. Trump’s case, if the Council of Elders rescinds the suspension, Facebook will have seven days to give him back access to his account.
For, against and shared
Whatever the final decision, it will be widely criticized.
Admirers of the billionaire accuse Facebook of censorship.
But private companies are free to set their own rules of moderation. “Donald Trump can go on Fox News, he has many other ways of expressing himself,” notes Daniel Kreiss, professor at the University of North Carolina.
Supporters of maintaining the status quo consider, for their part, that the suspension of the billionaire’s account should have taken place much earlier.
“He was using Facebook and other platforms to spread clearly bogus messages about electoral processes, very effectively undermining American democracy,” recalls Samuel Woolley of the University of Texas School of Journalism.
The researcher also mentions the frequent attacks against his detractors, “considered by his subscribers as indications that they too could troll and harass these people”.
From 89 to 2 million
Other platforms took action against Donald Trump after the Capitol invasion.
YouTube has left the former president’s channel online, but prevents him from posting new videos, waiting for the “risk of violence to decrease,” according to his boss Susan Wojcicki.
Twitter – his favorite network with nearly 89 million subscribers – has suspended his account permanently and irrevocably.
But Jack Dorsey, the founder of the tweets network, had nonetheless lamented a “failure to promote healthy conversation,” which set a “dangerous” precedent for the power held by big business.
The former head of state has taken refuge on the openly conservative and conspiratorial Gab network, where he is followed by 2 million people and continues to claim without proof that the election of Joe Biden was rigged.
Mr. Trump’s digital ostracization has been widely hailed by elected Democrats and American civil society.
In Europe, however, it has drawn criticism from associations and leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who are concerned about the power of tech companies over free speech.
“Whatever the decision, we should be uncomfortable with the idea that decisions of this nature are made by unelected, unaccountable companies and by the inspectors they have chosen each other, ”concludes Elizabeth Renieris.