Facebook’s decision to ban Trump for at least the next two weeks got a lot of airplay today, as the most decisive action yet by the social network to deal with disinformation from the president. But it’s doubtful this constitutes any major sea change in Facebook’s historically hands-off approach to dealing with toxic speech.
Instead, this seems a very specific situation. After all, if a national leader’s use of social media to foment a violent coup d’etat isn’t grounds for being locked out of Facebook and Twitter, what else would be? It’s hard to see how Republicans who’ve complained endlessly that social media’s content moderation policies are a form of censorship could even push back on this occasion.