| Friend,
The Facebook Oversight Board will give its recommendation on whether to allow Trump back on the social-media platform any day now.
The right thing to do is clear. But Facebook is determined to keep profiting off of the hate and lies that people like Donald Trump spread. That’s why we need you to join us and tell Zuckerberg: It doesn’t matter what your oversight board says. Trump is dangerous and cannot be allowed a platform as massive as Facebook.
For years, Trump used social media to spread lies and hate that translated into real-life violence. In Kenosha, Wisconsin. At the U.S. Capitol. In the Atlanta area. There are so many reasons why Facebook must not give him a megaphone.
Trump has caused so much harm, and yet this decision isn’t just about him. It’s about how Facebook has failed time and time again to enforce its own rules. It’s about whether the platform values people of color, LGBTQIA+ folks and women as much as it values violent white supremacists. It’s about democracy, the social-media company’s outsized influence on our society and its blatant disregard for the real-life harm it has caused.
Facebook has an opportunity to do the bare minimum: to enforce its own rules in response to Trump’s many violations of the platform's terms of service. Yet we have reason to believe that Zuckerberg, and the Oversight Board he created, will make the wrong decision ... and the rest of us will pay for it. Demand that Facebook make its ban of Trump permanent, once and for all.
There must be lasting consequences for white supremacists who incite violence on Facebook. Because if there aren’t, then who is the platform really for?
Thanks for all you do,
Lucia and the rest of the Free Press Action team
freepress.net
P.S. It’s unacceptable for Mark Zuckerberg to trade our safety and democracy for Facebook’s profits: Tell Facebook to enforce its own terms of service and ban Trump for good.
1. “Democrats Accuse Trump Administration of Trying to ‘Obfuscate the White Supremacist Threat’ With New Categories for Domestic Terrorism,” The Washington Post, May 2, 2019. |
