“It was not appropriate for Facebook to impose the indeterminate and standardless penalty of indefinite suspension,” the decision reads. Facebook needs to review the matter itself, the board wrote, and “determine and justify a proportionate response that is consistent with the rules that are applied to other users of its platform.” The board set a deadline of six months from now, at which point we will no doubt have another news cycle about Trump’s presence on social media.
For years, Trump was at the center of an attention loop that was both extremely consequential and meaningless; a head of state was using his personal Twitter account to amplify extremist content, manipulate public attention, retweet dumb memes, promote dangerous conspiracy theories, and speak directly to followers, who in the end were willing to storm the Capitol to try to overturn an election they falsely believed was stolen.
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Source: Why upholding Trump’s Facebook ban won’t break the cycle | MIT Technology Review