Beautiful Virgin Islands

Tuesday, Jul 22, 2025

Facebook braces for showdown with world leaders after Trump ban

Facebook braces for showdown with world leaders after Trump ban

From Jair Bolsonaro to Boris Johnson, world leaders have an acute interest in Facebook’s next content decisions.

Facebook's problem with world leaders is about to get a whole lot worse.

In India, the government passed rules to give itself a greater say over what's posted on social media. In Poland, lawmakers drafted proposals to stop Facebook and others from deleting potentially harmful posts or banning people who broke their community standards. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, the country's populist president, threatened to do the same after the local supreme court ordered Facebook to ban several of his top allies.

Into that political quagmire steps the so-called Oversight Board: a group of outside experts that demanded Facebook decide within six months if Donald Trump should be allowed back onto its platform. In its ruling, the body made it clear that politicians and other influential users should not be treated any differently compared to everyone else on social media.

“Political leaders do not have a greater right to freedom of expression than other people," said Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the former Danish prime minister and co-chair of the Oversight Board.

Yet even before the ink is dry on that decision, Facebook is facing a drumbeat of new rules around the world aimed at hobbling its powers to hold political leaders accountable for what they can say to their millions of online followers. Many run counter to the Oversight Board's claims that all content that breaks the company's content rules, especially if it comes from senior politicians, should be swiftly removed from the global platform.

The proposals will lead to an inevitable showdown between Facebook and global leaders, many of whom believe the American tech giant has become too powerful in deciding how elected officials can communicate directly with would-be supporters. Countries from Mexico to Turkey want to give politicians, not social media giants, the right to decide on what and who can post online.

That tension has been simmering for years. But the recent Trump ruling has again rekindled the fight over who should have the final say over what is posted on the world's largest social network. The outside group determined the former U.S. president's comments around the Capitol Hill riots had broken Facebook's rules but also chastised the company for its "vague, standardless penalty" for banning him for an indefinite period.

The relationship between Facebook and its Oversight Board — a collection of human rights experts, legal scholars and former politicians — will come to a head in coming months as the expert group is due to judge a new round of claims involving world leaders and their followers. In particular, the Oversight Board is expected to be asked to judge whether other leaders broke the platform's rules when using it to speak to their supporters.

"At some point, these types of questions are going back to the Board," said Evelyn Douek, an online free speech expert at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. "If it's not Trump, it will be another global leader."

Facebook's dilemma


The tech giant is acutely aware of the bind it now faces — and the challenges the Oversight Board's Trump ruling created.

Nick Clegg, the former British deputy prime minister and the company's chief global lobbyist, told POLITICO that the experts had muddied the water in their decision by both claiming that political speech in democracies should be treated differently so that voters could make informed decisions, and that all content should be treated by the same rules.

"I don't think they were fully resolved," he said. "On one hand, they recognized that political speech is rather atypical speech, and on the other hand, they were also saying: but there should be nothing different about politicians compared to others with significant reach. So we have to grapple with that."

Facebook has until June 4, at the latest, to respond to the experts' nonbinding recommendations on how to treat content posted by global leaders and other influential users. Those suggestions included greater clarity to all users on how the company made decisions about removing content and an internal audit of the tech giant's own role in promoting falsehoods around electoral fraud in November's U.S. election.

Yet Thomas Hughes, the Oversight Board's director, told POLITICO that the group's guidance had been clear. Facebook, he said, should treat all content the same, but must also weigh the potential harm of keeping posts online from politicians that may have broken the company's rules. The key was providing greater transparency on how the social media giant made its decisions on removing or reinstating specific material.

When asked how the group would rule on content flagged from a country with its own social media rules, the former human rights campaigner said the Oversight Board would not shy away from adjudicating against such legislation if it did not comply with existing human rights standards.

Under the group's bylaws, it cannot take on cases that lead to either criminal liability or "adverse governmental action" against Facebook or the Oversight Board. But Hughes said there was scope to judge content in authoritarian or democratic regimes where governments were trying to suppress opposition.

"If repressive country X decides that a particular user on Facebook shouldn't criticise the leader for whatever particular reason, and there's a law that says that, that is not a law the board is going to uphold," he said without naming any specific countries. "It's not a sort of law the board is going to say well that's a really good legitimate restriction on expression that fits with international human rights standards."

Test cases


It did not take long for Brazil's Bolsonaro to respond to the Oversight Board's decision against Trump.

Days after the ruling, the populist leader, whose online swagger and peddling of COVID-19 falsehoods have drawn comparisons to the former U.S. president, announced plans to revamp the country's internet rules to sanction social media companies that either flag or remove content favorable to the Brazilian president. Facebook, Twitter and Google's YouTube have previously removed some of Bolsonaro's posts for promoting misinformation about the ongoing pandemic.

Sérgio Lüdtke, editor of the Comprova Project, a coalition of 24 media outlets that fact-checks content about public policies in Brazil, said the country's president was likely bluffing on his threats to rewrite Brazil's rules. But, he added, Bolsonaro was trying to protect his social media accounts, which have tens of millions of followers, ahead of next year's general election because they were a direct way to communicate with voters increasingly disenchanted with how he's leading the country.

"To Bolsonaro, it is essential to preserve the immense social capital that these accounts have accumulated in recent years," he said in an email. "There is a high expectation about what will happen to his accounts since he has made many posts that go against Facebook's rules."

It's not just Brazil.

Last week, the United Kingdom proposed social media laws that include hefty penalties for the largest companies if they don't take action against illegal content like online extremism and so-called harmful material like misinformation and self-harm videos. British officials, though, included provisions that would stop Facebook and others from removing posts viewed as "democratically important," including content from politicians and the country's government.

For Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, countries worldwide are split in their approaches to social media companies and how they should deal with content used to communicate directly with voters.

For some, he said, the focus was on complaining that tech giants should do more to stop the spread of potentially harmful behavior, without passing new legislation to force them to do so.

For others, there was a push to create new rules that would take the final say out of the hands of these tech companies. Yet even those laws do not necessarily answer the question of whether Trump's posts around the January 6 riots should have been allowed to remain online.

"Politicians are hung up around the fact that Facebook, as a company, had the right to make a decision about Trump's account," he said. "They've developed an interest around online content just when it starts to affect people like them."

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
UK Government Considers Dropping Demand for Apple Encryption Backdoor
Severe Flooding in South Korea Claims Lives Amid Ongoing Rescue Operations
Japanese Man Discovers Family Connection Through DNA Testing After Decades of Separation
Russia Signals Openness to Ukraine Peace Talks Amid Escalating Drone Warfare
Switzerland Implements Ban on Mammography Screening
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
Pogacar Extends Dominance with Stage Fifteen Triumph at Tour de France
CEO Resigns Amid Controversy Over Relationship with HR Executive
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
NVIDIA Achieves $4 Trillion Valuation Amid AI Demand
US Revokes Visas of Brazilian Corrupted Judges Amid Fake Bolsonaro Investigation
U.S. Congress Approves Rescissions Act Cutting Federal Funding for NPR and PBS
North Korea Restricts Foreign Tourist Access to New Seaside Resort
Brazil's Supreme Court Imposes Radical Restrictions on Former President Bolsonaro
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Judge Criticizes DOJ Over Secrecy in Dropping Charges Against Gang Leader
Apple Closes $16.5 Billion Tax Dispute With Ireland
Von der Leyen Faces Setback Over €2 Trillion EU Budget Proposal
UK and Germany Collaborate on Global Military Equipment Sales
Trump Plans Over 10% Tariffs on African and Caribbean Nations
Flying Taxi CEO Reclaims Billionaire Status After Stock Surge
Epstein Files Deepen Republican Party Divide
Zuckerberg Faces $8 Billion Privacy Lawsuit From Meta Shareholders
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
SpaceX Nears $400 Billion Valuation With New Share Sale
Microsoft, US Lab to Use AI for Faster Nuclear Plant Licensing
Trump Walks Back Talk of Firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell
Zelensky Reshuffles Cabinet to Win Support at Home and in Washington
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Irish Tech Worker Detained 100 days by US Authorities for Overstaying Visa
Dimon Warns on Fed Independence as Trump Administration Eyes Powell’s Succession
Church of England Removes 1991 Sexuality Guidelines from Clergy Selection
Superman Franchise Achieves Success with Latest Release
Hungary's Viktor Orban Rejects Agreements on Illegal Migration
Jeff Bezos Considers Purchasing Condé Nast as a Wedding Gift
Ghislaine Maxwell Says She’s Ready to Testify Before Congress on Epstein’s Criminal Empire
Bal des Pompiers: A Celebration of Community and Firefighter Culture in France
FBI Chief Kash Patel Denies Resignation Speculations Amid Epstein List Controversy
Air India Pilot’s Mental Health Records Under Scrutiny
Google Secures Windsurf AI Coding Team in $2.4 Billion Licence Deal
Jamie Dimon Warns Europe Is Losing Global Competitiveness and Flags Market Complacency
South African Police Minister Suspended Amid Organised Crime Allegations
Nvidia CEO Claims Chinese Military Reluctance to Use US AI Technology
Hong Kong Advances Digital Asset Strategy to Address Economic Challenges
Australia Rules Out Pre‑commitment of Troops, Reinforces Defence Posture Amid US‑China Tensions
Martha Wells Says Humanity Still Far from True Artificial Intelligence
Nvidia Becomes World’s First Four‑Trillion‑Dollar Company Amid AI Boom
U.S. Resumes Deportations to Third Countries After Supreme Court Ruling
Excavation Begins at Site of Mass Grave for Children at Former Irish Institution
Iranian President Reportedly Injured During Israeli Strike on Secret Facility
×