Plane To Fly Over Peninsula Facebook HQ, Urge Permanent Trump Ban

MENLO PARK, CA — A plane flying a banner with the message “Keep Trump Off Facebook” will hover over Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park on Tuesday, according to organizers.

The plane, commissioned by the progressive media watchdog group Media Matters for America, is part of a protest organized by advocacy groups calling for Facebook to permanently ban former President Donald Trump from the social media platform.

In an announcement earlier this month, Facebook said it would ban Trump for at least two years for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, leaving open the possibility that Trump could be reinstated in early 2023 — in time for a potential 2024 campaign.

Facebook said in a statement that it would decide “whether the risk to public safety has receded” in two years.

Organizers — who created the website KeepTrumpOffFacebook.com — said the plane will fly over the Facebook campus from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and they hope it catches the attention of Facebook employees.

“Facebook employees are out of excuses for not making more noise about the platform’s complicity in fomenting violence and extremism,” Media Matters President and CEO Angelo Carusone said in a news release. “We will never stop reminding them that with Facebook’s announcement of Trump’s ‘eventual reinstatement’ instead of just permanently suspending him, Facebook is an accomplice in the extremism and violence that will surely follow.”

In the statement announcing the two-year suspension, Facebook said "there will be a strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions that will be triggered if Mr. Trump commits further violations in future, up to and including permanent removal of his pages and accounts."

Facebook’s decision strayed from that of Twitter and Snapchat, both of which permanently suspended Trump’s account. YouTube and Twitch have indefinitely suspended Trump’s account. The same Facebook rules apply to the former president’s account on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

Facebook’s ruling came after its own Oversight Board said that keeping Trump off the platform indefinitely would be an arbitrary decision, but added that Facebook was right in banning Trump after the insurrection.

Media Matters and Accountable Tech commissioned a full page ad in the New York Times earlier this month. And last week, Media Matters and 30 other nonprofit and advocacy groups ran an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the Mercury News.

“If you move forward with this course of action, you will be knowingly putting American lives and democracy at risk,” the letter reads. “The undersigned organizations refuse to accept that as the cost of business; we strongly urge you to reverse your decision and permanently ban Donald Trump from your platform.”