(PresidentialWire.com)- After Facebook’s “Oversight Board” decided to support the social media platform’s decision to permanently ban former President Donald Trump, a member of that same oversight board has hit out and criticized the social media platform’s rules as being in “shambles.”
Speaking to Fox News Sunday,v former federal judge Michael McConnell criticized the decision and described how the board gave Facebook a “certain amount of time to get their house in order.”
“They needed some time because their rules are a shambles. They are not transparent. They are unclear. They are internally inconsistent,” he said. “So we made a series of recommendations about how to make their rules clearer and more consistent.”
While the Oversight Board ultimately upheld the ban on President Trump, which was made at roughly the same time other social media sites – like Twitter – banned the president after the January 6 Washington, D.C., riots, there were some caveats.
McConnell said that President Trump is “subject to the same rules on Facebook as everyone else” and the board “held that this was in fact a violation and thus Facebook was justified in taking them down,” he said with reference to the president’s comments about why people were rioting in D.C.
He added, however, that Facebook was “not justified in taking him down indefinitely” and that Facebook “did not provide any reasons for that.”
“That was wrong,” he said, adding that Facebook “exercises too much power.”
So while the left-wing media proudly reported that the Oversight Board supported Facebook’s decision, those outlets did not report on the context surrounding the decision.
The interview with McConnell on Fox shows that not every member of the Oversight Board believed that the decision was fair, but they did recognize that it was consistent with Facebook’s rules.
The real question is whether Facebook’s rules are fair and if banning people permanently is right…and McConnell seems to believe it’s not.
So, will Facebook listen?
