Facebook Bans President Trump From Posting For The Rest Of His Presidency

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Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg arrives for a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee on Capitol Hill in October 2019.





Susan Walsh/AP



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Susan Walsh/AP



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Trump, who reaches more than 100 million followers combined by sharing posts to Facebook and Twitter, has used social media to build his political career, as the companies have taken a mostly hands-off approach to his content.

In an effort to limit the spread of misleading posts about the coronavirus, the election and other topics, Facebook and Twitter in recent months have been affixing warning labels on Trump posts to indicate that the information is in dispute.



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Those measures fueled a battle between the White House and Silicon Valley in which the president signed executive orders and rallied his base around the idea of stripping social media companies of a key legal protection that has allowed them to set their own content rules and avoid litigation for what is posted to the sites.

In his post on Thursday, Zuckerberg wrote that he still believes that the public has the right to «the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech, but that this time is distinct.



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«The current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government, Zuckerberg wrote.

University of Washington professor Kate Starbird, who studies disinformation in moments of crisis, echoed what many experts in her field have said since the mob swarmed the Capitol: Everyone is finally seeing what online researchers have been documenting for years.

«Wearing their war paint, waving their flags, & ranting about conspiracy theories … inside the U.S. Capitol. These aren’t bots or Russian trolls. They’re ‘real’ Americans, profoundly misled, thinking they are patriots as they attempt to dismantle democracy in service of a mad king, Starbird wrote on Twitter.

Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University communications professor and an expert on social media, said Thursday’s announcement is too little, too late after Facebook allowed Trump to find an enormous audience online with harmful content.

«Facebook policies have enabled the president for years, she said.

Editor’s note: Facebook and Google are among NPR’s financial supporters.