Trump and the Facebook Oversight Board

We the People

National Constitution Center

News, News Commentary, History

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2021

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Facebook Oversight Board—a recently-developed court of sorts that independently reviews Facebook’s decisions and policies—issued a major ruling this week, upholding the company’s initial decision to ban President Trump indefinitely, but calling on the company to come to a final decision on its suspension of Trump and similar cases with greater detail. The board also requested that Facebook clarify its policies on political leaders, do some additional fact-finding, and report back with more on its decision and rationale in six months—when the board will reconsider the ban. Host Jeffrey Rosen considered the impact of the decision for the future of digital speech with two experts who have done path-breaking work on the Facebook Oversight Board: Kate Klonick, assistant professor of law at St. John’s Law School who spent a year embedded with the Oversight Board as it was being developed, and Nate Persily, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and co-director of the Stanford Program on Democracy and the Internet. Questions or comments about the show? Email us at podcast@constitutioncenter.org.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, and welcome to We
0:08.2	the People, a weekly show of constitutional debate.
0:11.6	The National Constitution Center is a nonpartisan nonprofit chartered by Congress to increase awareness and understanding of the Constitution among the American people.
0:21.0	The Facebook Oversight Board has just upheld the banning of President Trump from
0:26.3	Facebook, but the board found that Facebook's indefinite suspension of President Trump
0:32.3	was inappropriate and said that Facebook now has six months
0:36.5	to review the standards for the ban. Here to explain this path-breaking decision and its potential impact on the future of free speech online
0:47.6	are two of America's leading experts on online free speech and on the Facebook Oversight Board.
0:54.5	Kate Klonic is assistant professor of law at St. John's Law School.
0:58.6	She spent a year embedded with Facebook's Oversight Board
1:02.0	as it was being developed and subsequently has written articles about it in the Yale Law Journal and the New Yorker.
1:08.5	Kate, it is wonderful to have you back on the show.
1:11.5	Thank you for having me.
1:13.0	And Nate personally is the James B McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the
1:17.4	co-director of the Stanford Program on Democracy and the Internet.
1:21.3	He has written extensively on the law of democracy, the First Amendment, and online free speech.
1:26.4	Nate, it is wonderful to have you joining us.
1:29.1	Thanks for having me.
1:30.1	Nate, you have called this decision, the Marbury versus Madison of online free speech law.
1:36.6	Tell us why and why it is important.
1:39.1	Well, I think that the decision is important in its own right but it's also important in
1:43.8	delineating the responsibilities and powers of the board and its relationship to
	...

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