Facebook Exec Defends Two-Year Trump Ban: Fomenting, Praising Acts of Violence Is a ‘Red Line’

Facebook vice president of global affairs Nick Clegg defended former President Donald Trump’s two-year Facebook ban and said his statements praising his supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6th was a red line.

Facebook banned Trump after the riots at the Capitol, and the company’s oversight board upheld that ban, while criticizing certain aspects of it. This past week Facebook said Trump would be banned for two years, until January 2023.

Trump swiped at Facebook during his speech on Saturday, and Clegg responded on ABC’s This Week by affirming they felt “the most severe penalty is justified.”

George Stephanopoulos questioned Clegg about Facebook banning Trump over his encouragement of the rioters but not over his statements pushing the big lie.

“What about the lies about the election?” he asked. “The president repeated a series of those last night again. If the president gave the speech he gave last night in January 2023, would the suspension be extended?”

Clegg said that while Facebook works with fact-checkers to deal with misinformation, “I don’t think anybody wants a private company like FaceBook to be vetting everything that people say on social media for its precise accuracy and then booting people off the platform if what they say is inaccurate.”

“So the bright red line there is encouraging violence, not spreading lies,” Stephanopoulos said.

“Yeah,” Clegg responded. “We’ve got very clear rules, they’re called community standards. Everyone can go online to see them, and one of the brightest of those red lines, as you just implied, is that you cannot — it doesn’t matter who you are, you could be the Pope, the Queen of England, the President of the United States — you cannot use our services, and.I hope most people would think this is reasonable, to aid, abet, foment, or praise acts of violence.”

You can watch above, via ABC.