Facebook’s Content Moderation Decisions Preferable to One-Size-Fits-All Government Regulation

Facebook announced today it suspended former President Donald Trump from the platform for two years retroactive to January 7, 2021. Responding to a ruling against the former president’s indefinite suspension from its own Oversight Board, the social network also laid out policies for how it would treat content moderation of posts by public officials.

Director of CEI’s Center for Technology and Innovation Jessica Melugin said:

“People who value freedom of speech should be encouraged a private entity like Facebook is attempting to deal with thorny issues about what is and is not permissible speech on their own, without heavy-handed and rigid government regulation. Facebook is under pressure from both sides of the ideological spectrum to enact very different policies toward content moderation and are faced with novel challenges presented by the billions of user-generated post shared on their platform daily. No decision will make everyone happy.

“While it is curious Facebook chose to respond to the Oversight Board’s decision five months early, dealing with these issues without government coercion will allow Facebook to institute policies in line with its own values while not imposing their own content moderation standards on other platforms, as would happen with a one-size-fits-all federal regulatory approach.

“The former president might be suspended from Facebook for two years, but that is not the same as being ‘censored’ or ‘silenced.’ He is still free to make public statements, appear on television and radio, hold rallies, or join other social networks. The government compelling Facebook to carry speech with which it disagrees would be the real threat to free speech.

“Facebook has every right to curate their product as they choose, just as consumers have every right to use a different social media platform with content moderation and community standards more in line with their own.”

CEI senior fellow Ryan Young said:

“What is the right way to deal with malicious, incendiary, or fake content? Nobody knows—and that’s the point. Facebook doesn’t know. President Trump doesn’t know. Nor do Republicans and Democrats in Congress. We are in the middle of a discovery process right now. Maybe Facebook made the right call to ban President Trump from its platforms for two years after his remarks about the January 6 Capitol riots. Maybe they didn’t. Not only does nobody have the correct answer, there likely isn’t a single correct answer.

“What we need is an ongoing process of trial and error, where individuals and companies discover which norms, institutions, and policies will help to slow the spread of misinformation on social media while giving people space to express themselves. Washington is not the place to look to for leadership here. People are already coming up with multiple competing approaches to content moderation. As people try them out, tinker with them, discard them, or improve them, the results will be far better than whatever uniform, politically motivated policy Congress would write down in stone.”

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