Former President Donald Trump could be back on Facebook as early as May if the company’s Oversight Board determines his account should be reinstated.
Facebook’s Oversight Board accepted a recent appeal by Trump to have his account reinstated, according to Helle Thorning–Schmidt, the co-chair of the board.
“The case is a textbook example of why the board was created because many people are interested in it and it’s ‘very principled,'” Thorning–Schmidt explained.
The board is now reviewing Trump’s case and has 90 days to make a decision about whether the former president’s suspension from the platform should become permanent or not.
However, a decision could come sooner than that, because Thorning–Schmidt said the board is trying to complete the Trump case “a little bit faster” due to public interest.
Facebook suspended Trump following the Jan. 6 uprising at the US Capitol, claiming he posed “too great” a threat to the public at the time.
The social-media publisher also said Trump could “undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor [President Joe Biden].”
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, defended the decision to censor Trump.
The former president was “fomenting a violent insurrection designed to thwart the peaceful transition of power,” Clegg claimed, without evidence.
“It was an unprecedented set of events which called for unprecedented action,” Clegg added.
But in recent weeks, Facebook has heard from “thousands” of people who are opposed to Trump’s ban, according to Newsweek.
Thorning–Schmidt said the board plans to take all of these complaints into consideration.
“Once we have decided this we will put out what the user said, what Facebook said, and why we reached the decision that we did,” Thorning–Schmidt explained.
Once the Facebook Oversight Board makes its decision, it cannot be overruled by CEO Mark Zuckerberg or any other Facebook executive.
Despite the public outcry, Trump’s desire to return to Facebook may come as a surprise given the company’s track record on censorship, which is likely to continue regardless.
Once notorious for his tweet-storms, Trump said last week that he had no intention of returning after it announced it was permanently deleting his account.
Trump has hinted at possible efforts to establish a new, conservative-friendly platform and was rumored to have been in discussions to become a stakeholder in Parler before the app’s popularity boom led leftist rivals like Amazon, Google and Apple to collude in an attempt to de-platform it.
