Facebook’s Oversight Board said Friday it will delay, by a few weeks, announcing its decision on whether to allow former President Donald Trump back on the platform because of the large amount of public feedback that it needs to take into consideration.
The social media giant first referred its suspension of Trump’s posting privileges to the Board in mid-January, after Trump was banned from both Facebook and Instagram indefinitely for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
“We extended the public comments deadline for this case, receiving 9,000+ responses,” the Facebook Oversight Board said in a statement Friday. “The Board’s commitment to carefully reviewing all comments has extended the case timeline, in line with the Board’s bylaws. We will share more information soon.”
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When the Board initially received Trump’s case in January, spokesman John Taylor said at the time that it had 90 days to review all the facts but that “we expect to act more quickly than that.”
The Board was created in 2018 by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as an independent body to oversee controversial content moderation decisions. The Board is made up of 20 members who were chosen in 2020 from a wide variety of backgrounds, including media, law, and international policymaking.
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The board started its operations in October of last year and made its first content moderation decisions in January, overruling Facebook in four out of five cases.
