“We’re dealing with a significant proportion of registered Republicans who question the legitimacy of the Biden Administration,” says Weitzner, who served in the Obama White House. The question of Trump’s continued access to Facebook is especially thorny for the company, given the polarized political landscape. “Over time, if this body makes decisions that are seen as reasonable, and Facebook follows them, I think they’ll become a part of the landscape.” “The ambition for the Oversight Board is for it to have a quasi-judicial role, and the key thing about any judicial institution is it has to have legitimacy to earn deference,” says Daniel Weitzner, the director of MIT’s Internet Policy Research Initiative. and E.U., where legislative efforts to rein in Big Tech are on the cards. The decision will be watched particularly closely in the U.S. The Oversight Board’s ruling on the Trump case will be a defining moment for Facebook, perhaps the biggest test yet of whether the company’s attempts to regulate itself can gain legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary people and lawmakers around the world.

Critics Say It Won’t Solve the Platform’s Biggest Problems Read More: Facebook’s Oversight Board Is Reviewing Its First Cases.

Then, the day after Trump left the White House, Facebook announced it was asking its newly created Oversight Board to decide whether to reinstate the 45th U.S. The news landed into polarized Americans’ feeds with predictable divisiveness: many said the decision had come too late others-and not just supporters of the former President-derided it as unconscionable censorship. While Twitter permanently banned Trump, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook’s suspension (and Instagram’s) would last indefinitely, and at least until the end of Trump’s presidency. 7-the day after he incited a violent mob of his supporters to storm the U.S. Trump’s accounts have been suspended since Jan.

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