In 2020, Facebook appointed what it refers to as its “Supreme Court”—a quasi-independent council called the Facebook Oversight Board—to review controversial content moderation decisions. This week, the Oversight Board handed down its most important judgment to date: support for the company’s move to ban former U.S. President Donald Trump from posting on Facebook and Instagram a day after the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. But the board also called on Facebook to review that decision within six months, in order to ensure the deplatforming was “necessary and proportionate,” and to consider making Trump’s a time-limited ban.
