Since the start of the pandemic, there’s been a concerning surge of anti-Asian hate crime, with racist generalizations of a “Chinese virus” weaponized against East Asians in particular. Combined with the Atlanta shootings in March, the normalization of racism towards Asian people in Western society has moved to the forefront of conversations. The UK is no stranger to anti-Asian hate, as recent heavily criticized race reports suggest. There is a wealth of Asian culture here, and many Asian people have experienced abuse.

Amid the ongoing discussions, the beauty industry is on the top of people’s minds. In recent years, it has become apparent that racism and cultural appropriation towards South and Southeast, Western, and Central Asians is normalized in so-called beauty “trends.” From “skin brightening” to facial fillers, many trends are rooted in white-favoring beauty standards and erase people of color. Unintentional or not, it needs to be challenged.

Social media has become a frenzy of big beauty movements. One major “look” that has swept across all platforms is the “fox eye” trend. Endorsed by makeup artists and Instagram influencers alike, it involves distorting one’s eye and brow shape using thick, light-colored concealer, tape, or even Botox. The goal is to achieve an upward slanted look. On TikTok alone, the #foxeyemakeup hashtag has 25.4 million views and counting. It can’t be ignored that this opens a gateway to fetishizing Asian features, and is entirely ignorant.

“The fox eye trend is catastrophic to the Asian community,” tattoo artist Alex Lawson says. As the fox eye peaked in popularity, many pointed out that it relies on taking facial features from East Asians — features that have often been mocked. It’s wrong, not to mention racist, to glorify these features on white faces alone. “I’ve had strangers in the street pulling their eyes and shouting slurs at me,” Lawson continues. “People want to wear Asian features without living the effect of being an actual Asian person.” Photographer and podcast host Natalie Lam also voices her concern about the fox eye trend. “We were mocked for so many years and we still are,” she says. “It’s insulting that Westerners can pick and choose things that are out of our control and just drop the ‘trend’ when the next one appears.”

Dr. Anjali Mahto, a consultant dermatologist and beauty expert, says the trend makes her uneasy. “I feel really uncomfortable with anything that changes one’s ethnic features,” she says. Though some might argue that it’s unconscious and unintentional, the popularity of the fox eye trend proves that beauty and racism are so intertwined that stealing from other races, ethnicities, and cultures has become the norm. If the basis of your “aesthetic” comes from the oppression of others, it is unfair and unjust. “The opposite of this, often in Far Eastern countries, is having plastic surgery to remove eyelid folds to create a more Westernized experience,” Dr. Mahto adds, referring to blepharoplasty, also known as double eyelid surgery. It is popular among East Asian people and is said to make one’s features appear more Caucasian, as women strive to achieve Eurocentric standards of beauty.

Speaking of surgery, it’s impossible to scroll through beauty-focused TikTok and Instagram without coming across before-and-after videos of nose jobs. Liquid nonsurgical nose jobs that use filler to alter the shape of the nose are trending in particular. Of course, plastic surgery (or any face augmentation) is entirely down to the individual and their personal happiness — but so many of these liquid nose jobs and ideals of what noses “should” look like pander to whiteness.

On TikTok, the hashtag #nonsurgicalnosejob has 16 million views; scroll through and you’ll see many women undergoing procedures to smooth out what they consider “bumps.” More often than not, these bumps are features of ethnic noses, showing genetic ancestry. Beauty influencer Halima of Fashionicide says that while her nose wasn’t a huge issue for her growing up, when she really got into beauty she noticed a lot of South Asian influencers would alter their noses with makeup as the contouring trend took off. Contouring is still big today, and can be seen to reinforce the idea that ethnic noses are not beautiful. “It didn’t make me feel particularly bad about [my nose], but if the people that are supposed to represent you are doing this, then I can totally see how South Asian women would feel that pressure,” Halima says.

Liquid nose jobs have become popular recently among East Asian women. The trend sees people getting filler injected into their nose to give them a bridge bone, much like a Caucasian nose. An online search uncovers countless aestheticians who claim they can create a “higher nose bridge” in people of Asian descent who tend to have “lower nose bridges,” as though the latter is something to be changed. It’s obvious that beauty standards are at play here and that insecurities may be shaped by years of white Eurocentric goals, which target Asian women of color. 

Aesthetics aside, beauty tools and techniques have recently been called into question, too. Massage technique gua sha has a history in traditional Chinese medicine and is known to relax muscle tension, bring down inflammation, and reduce eye bags. However, similar to other cultural traditions, the Western world has rebranded the technique as “new” or “innovative.” Some have even gone so far as to tout it as “natural Botox,” causing offense. On their own, gua sha facial massaging tools are harmless, but the Asian women I spoke to for this feature vocalized a greater concern for how Western society revamps Asian rituals as its own. “The Western world repackaging Asian beauty items truly treads a fine line between appreciation and appropriation,” Lawson says. Lam adds, “Massage tools specifically are an instance where appropriation has been so normalized that even those whose cultures have been appropriated are no longer fazed by it. I think Western beauty companies essentially stealing an idea and claiming it as their own is, over anything else, incredibly lazy.”

Lawson adds that henna products, although not inherently discriminatory, are another example of Asian appropriation in beauty. “This is something East Asians have used for centuries,” she says. “It’s seemingly harmless but I’ve seen beauticians and makeup artists advertising henna eyebrow and freckle treatments for £30-£50,” when it is a cheap dye that many East Asian people use at home. Capitalizing on things like henna and gua sha by rebranding them as Western innovations via “trends” doesn’t sit right with many people, Lam says. “The key to appropriation vs. appreciation is giving credit where credit is due. To my knowledge, people aren’t giving credit to the originators of these techniques and tools, and instead act like they are revolutionary.”

Colorism is another of beauty’s biggest unkept secrets, and products that position their marketing with the goal of achieving “lighter” or “fairer” skin are rooted in racially coded language. It implies that anything other than white is undesirable. In the UK, we like to think we’ve moved beyond this: Unless prescribed by a dermatologist, lightening creams containing ingredients like hydroquinone, steroids, and mercury are banned here — yet you can still find lightening creams illegally stocked in high-street retailers and on third-party beauty websites. Frighteningly, however, beauty brands are shifting their strategy by appealing to consumers using different terminology such as skin “brightening” and “pigmentation reducing,” which arguably has a similar effect in some cases.

On TikTok especially, there are countless videos by beauty enthusiasts that show Asian women how to reduce their dark underarms or “strawberry legs” (pigmented hair follicles) using ingredients like acids and retinol. In a handful of videos, plenty of comments show that people have noticed body pigmentation but have never cared to do anything about it until now, while others ask if body pigmentation is normal. The answer is yes — but viral videos like these perpetuate the notion that it isn’t. Sometimes, it’s even less subtle. Recently, TikTok pages advertising questionable skin-brightening creams to Asian people have made their way into women’s feeds. Their advertising strategies often show dark skin being lightened, with hashtags such as #YesVeryClean. This suggests that dark skin is dirty, and no doubt leaves an impression on a younger audience.

Model and DJ Flik Renée says colorism haunted her growing up. “I was so harsh on myself in my teens, trying to meet unrealistic beauty standards which had me convinced that my beautiful skin wasn’t beautiful enough because I was ‘too dark’ or ‘not fair enough,'” she says. “It wasn’t unusual for aunties and family members to unintentionally drop remarks and give you tips on how to lighten your skin. This is how deep the ideology is set within the South Asian communities in particular.” Beauty influencer Yasmin Johal says that we need to turn to our communities and reconcile with our own colorist ideals. “I think a lot of the pressure of colorism comes from within my own culture, and for me that began when I was 8 years old,” Johal says. “I’d just come back from a holiday in Spain and I had really dark skin. My grandma told me to scrub it off. It implied to me that having dark skin wasn’t good.”

Like melanated skin, our disdain for body hair has become deeply entrenched in whiteness, not to mention misogyny. South Asian women with darker, thicker hair are often the target of ridicule and shame as their body hair tends to be more visible. Though perhaps not rooted entirely in racism, appealing to a white gaze pushes an unfair standard on many women of color. Of course, women with fairer skin and lighter hair may feel similar pressures to maintain grooming due to patriarchal standards, but they most likely do not face the same mockery as those with more noticeable body hair. Johal points specifically to brow trends, as brands and magazines champion “bushy brows” as the look to aim for. When trends like this come into fashion, they are only ever celebrated on white women. “A lot of South Asian women have very hairy faces naturally, and we generally tend to have hair in between our eyebrows,” she says. “It’s not a trend; it’s something we live with and something we’ve been bullied for, especially as younger women.”

On TikTok and Instagram, videos showcasing sugaring, threading, and hard waxing, and new shaving, epilating, and laser devices are uploaded in vast numbers. It’s safe to say that hair removal is trending, but this only adds to the existing pressures on young women. TikToker Anna recently took to the app to talk about having body and facial hair as an Asian woman after being criticized by a man online. She said, “There’s this conception that women should be hairless and I think it comes as a shock when they see how much hair a woman can grow.” Touching on a recent video that showed her underarm hair, Anna added, “As an Asian woman I have really thick, coarse, dark hair all over my body and face. I’m sure other women have been bullied for having hair in places they’re not supposed to, so stop policing where we should have hair. It’s so natural.”

Halima says that damaging beauty ideals are enforced by many women, too. “I was speaking to some of my colleagues about not shaving my legs one winter because I’d need all the warmth I can get and another South Asian girl overheard, looked at me in disgust, and asked me whether my husband would mind,” she says. “Sure, the standard may be Eurocentric, but it is enforced by non-Europeans just as strongly, if not stronger.” Music journalist Lucinda adds that says misogyny is definitely a factor in how body hair on women of color is perceived. “I’ve heard Asian men mock Asian women for their hair but it’s usually because they’re comparing them to white women,” she says. “Their ideal notion of a hairless woman stems from the media, not to mention the beauty industry pushing this as the expectation.” Shaving and removing your hair should be a choice, not something you feel you have to do. 

It isn’t just race that comes into play when analyzing today’s beauty “trends,” nor are Asian women the only ones affected by harmful beauty standards. While change is slow, calling these trends into question is a start in dismantling the beauty industry’s discriminatory views and blatant appropriation towards Asian people. What’s more, representation in beauty should be championed not simply because it’s the tokenistic “good thing” to do, but because white faces should not be the only ones allowed to thrive and prosper in this space. It’s more important than ever to be conscious of our behavior, our attitude towards those from diverse backgrounds, and how we consume beauty trends in the future.

This story was originally published on Refinery29 UK.

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On April 20th, woven in-between the breaking news of Derek Chauvin’s conviction in the murder of George Floyd, TikToks of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant made their way onto our Instagram feeds. Her face was now precious enough to be turned into shareable graphic art and her life was important enough to be the subject of thoughtful prose on Twitter. 

It’s a rare, extraordinary occasion when girls who look like Ma’Khia become the center of our attention. After a few clicks, I was brought to my knees with grief when I discovered that I was seeing Ma’Khia Bryant because she had been killed by Columbus Police Officer Nicholas Reardon. 

I read that she had a passion for lipgloss, bright colored Crocs, and pranks. She was young, Black, and fat. When her face appeared on my social media timelines, I saw myself along with every Black girl I’ve ever loved in her laid baby hairs and smile.

See, I’ve been a fat Black girl with a bad attitude since I was a child. To be clear, I wasn’t just your standard fat baby. Everyone loves a fat baby. I was a fat baby, toddler, teenager, and now adult. 

Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, I celebrated the fullness of my midwestern-born body in the reflection of my mother’s thighs that I used to hold onto when she danced with my twin sister and I to our favorite song, “The Double Dutch Bus” by Frankie Smith. 

As I grew up, I was confronted with the limits of my abundant preteen body after a Limited Too catalogue arrived at my house. Limited Too was the clothing brand for girls when I was kid. I was obsessed with the cute little pink polos, blue jean skorts, and camis with the built in bras that everyone in my school seemed to have before me. I flipped through the catalogue to select the clothes I was going to beg my grandmother to buy me. And with the sweetness that only my granny could deliver, she informed me that Limited Too didn’t carry my size. My granny opened her beloved JCPenny catalogue, flipped to the “Women’s” section and told me to pick out something for school from her catalogue instead. As you can imagine, there weren’t any bell bottom jeans or t-shirts with “Angel” printed across the chest in this part of the catalogue.  

I quickly learned what I could and couldn’t do as a “bigger” child. I balanced the art of staying in a child’s place while also being hyper aware of the things I was “too big” to do anymore. I was learning how to shrink myself to be worthy of just enough care and protection from adults. And when they failed to offer me the type of tenderness we should give to all children, I was expected to do it for myself.

Ma’Khia Bryant was a child who spoke like a child, and thought like a child. But from the moment that police officer fired into a crowd of adults to murder her, I watched as our world refused to understand her as a child.

Even after a year of heightened protest to demand that the police stop executing Black people and passing it off as public safety, I’m amazed that our communities still have a hard time expanding this universal demand to include all Black people. Even a Black girl who did something as common as carry a self-defense weapon to protect herself. She was a child, on her own, in the foster care system. The world taught her to fend for herself and then killed her for it.

At 32 years old, I still see myself in the life of Ma’Khia. Because make no mistake, under this white supremacist delusion made possible by capitalism and grotesque anti-Blackness, we are all vulnerable. We can’t pick and choose which Black lives deserve protection and which don’t. If we aren’t fighting for all of us, we aren’t fighting for any of us. 

The New York Times recently reported in great detail how the police, the State of Ohio and the broken foster care system as a whole failed Ma’Khia Bryant. But these are not the only failures. We fail Black girls like Ma’Khia in life and in death when we refuse to center their humanity and right to live full lives. We fail Black girls like Ma’Khia when we refuse to show tenderness to all children. And most importantly, we fail Black girls like Ma’Khia when we refuse to interrogate the ways we carry out harm on our own bodies and the bodies of Black folks we don’t see as a perfect vessel for care and protection. 

Individuals carry out countless offenses against fat Black bodies on a daily basis and it’s killing all of us slowly but surely. It’s devastating that the final offense was Ma’Khia Bryant being killed by the police. 

Ma’Khia’s knife and foster care profile shouldn’t reduce how much we fight for or care about Ma’Khia’s life. If anything, it should increase our concern for how vulnerable and helpless and unprotected she must have felt. We shouldn’t need to know all of the details to know she didn’t deserve to be gunned down by police and then blamed for her own death.

Ma’Khia should still be here. She deserved to be here and be loved well, simply because she was born. She deserved to age with resources to make her life easier, despite her circumstances. Ma’Khia, like all of us, deserved to be treated with tenderness in a world where she wouldn’t have felt the need to protect herself because she was already made safe. Ma’Khia deserved to feel safe. So many systems failed to make that her reality.

Ma’Khia Bryant, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner and Erica Garner were all viewed as big Black people when their lives were stolen by the state. The biggest and Blackest of us are being targeted and killed. Therefore, we must center the voices and organizing strategies of the biggest and Blackest if you intend see the other side of liberation. We will never get there if we don’t eradicate anti-Blackness and fatphobia.

We must listen to the teachings of Sonya Renee Taylor who proclaims “The Body is Not an Apology,” but is deserving of love and tenderness right now, as it is. If we can love ourselves in our bodies that carry all of identities and complex lived experiences beyond meaningless scales of value, then maybe we can love other bodies just as fiercely. If we stop making apologies for our bodies, our Blackness, and how we’ve had to fight to survive the ever present myth of white supremacy, then maybe we can extend that same type of understanding all Black people but especially our Ma’Khias. 

We all should be students of the Fat Futures Collective to explore the complexity of fatness in hopes of moving the needs of bigger bodies from the margins of our radical imagination to the center. I welcome us to listen to independent philosopher Tassiana Willis who makes their theories on the state’s subjection of fat darker skinned femmes accessible to the masses through their Instagram @ChubbyGoddess. And we must commune in the artistry and everyday living of fat Black artists like Jazmine “Da K.O.S.” Walker, Dom The Furious, Juh, and Kezia Harrell. These artists show us that liberation isn’t always a struggle. Specifically, the fat Black artist shows us that we are entitled to liberation and it can be actualized through a paintbrush, a twerk, a story, a self portrait, or rest. And if that is true for us, it can certainly be true for you too.

Everything about Ma’Khia’s story points to this Black child not being cared for abundantly well and  not trusting the care that she was receiving. If we truly believe that Ma’Khia Bryant should still be here, we must examine our own anti-Black fatphobia and ask ourselves how we plan to care for all fat Black bodies. Only then will we truly start to build the world we desire, free from oppression and violence. And don’t we all deserve to be free?

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We all had our own ways of coping throughout the first year of quarantine. Some of us learned to dance via TikTok, some of us learned to bake sourdough bread, and some of us vowed to never wear hard pants again. Gwyneth Paltrow, as it turns out, is no different.

Last Monday, while on the SmartLess podcast — hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett — the Goop founder reminded people that, despite her super holistic pandemic lifestyle, she, too, was a regular person just trying to survive the past year. And in 2020, she did some very regular-person things, like eating carbohydrates and drinking alcohol. Or as she called it: going “off the rails.”

“I’ve been on a bit of a cleanout,” she told the hosts. “Basically during quarantine, I was drinking seven nights a week and making pasta and eating bread. Like I went totally off the rails. I mean, who drinks multiple drinks seven nights a week? That’s not healthy.”

Despite calling her own habits unhealthy, this all seemed like a pretty average 2020 Tuesday to most of us. I mean, who among us hasn’t mainlined pasta and bread while watching Tiger King with a cocktail in hand (and a second on deck)?

Of course, drinking is personal: Two drinks a night may be no big deal for some but can feel problematic for others. And like Paltrow, many found that their consumption was perhaps worsened by the isolation (and boredom, and constant despair) in the early days of lockdown. According to Nielsen, liquor sales outside of bars and restaurants across the U.S. rose about 24% during quarantine in 2020.

That said, Paltrow seemed to indicate that she’s beyond her 14-drinks-a-week habit, and in fact, offered up tips on how to make her most signature cocktail. It includes — wait for it — quinoa whiskey, because of course, it does. When asked by Bateman whether her nightly drinks consisted of wine or something harder, she noted that she loved whiskey and shared her recipe for the cocktail she named after her grandfather Buster Paltrow, “because he liked whiskey sours.”

“It’s this great quinoa whiskey from this distillery in Tennessee with maple syrup and lemon juice, and it’s just heaven,” Paltrow explained. “And I would have two of those every night of quarantine.”

Now, only one question remains: Is Buster Paltrow’s secret whiskey drink really that good? I’ll be doing a real examination of that as soon as I can get my hands on some quinoa whiskey.

If you are struggling with substance abuse, please call the SAMHSA National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357 for free and confidential information.

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There are bad dreams, there are full-on nightmares, and then there’s what unfolded on Friday night in a ballroom in The Villages, a retirement community in Florida: a rally hosted by right-wing provocateurs Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). The two joined forces to launch what they’re calling a series of America First rallies, because why make America great again when you can just make it 2016 again? And while The Villages is not in Gaetz’s district, or in Greene’s state, these two hope to win over former President Donald Trump loyalists in their ongoing battle for control of the Republican Party. 

“I just got to check something: I just want to make sure I’m in the right place,” Greene yelled at the mostly unmasked voters. “Tell me who is your president?” 

“Donald Trump!” the crowd yelled back.

“That’s my president, too,” Greene responded, to the delight of those in attendance. 

Last year, 60% of voters living in The Villages voted for Trump, making the location a prime spot for Greene and Gaetz’s Make America 2016 Again kickoff rally. Among the cringe-worthy pair’s targets was Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who has been firmly anti-Trump while the majority of her party grovels in front of the twice-impeached former president and reality-television host. House Republicans are set to vote on removing Cheney, who is the number-three Republican in the House, from her leadership role as early as Wednesday in response to her voting to impeach Trump and denouncing the party’s decision to perpetuate the “Big Lie” — that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump. (Hint: It wasn’t.) 

“If Liz Cheney could even find Wyoming on a map and went there, she would find a lot of very angry cowboys are not happy,” Gaetz said during the rally. “She’s sort of for every war: War in Syria — for it. War against Trump and his supporters — for it. War against the Republican conference; war against her own voters.”

The audacity of conflating a civil war in Syria that, to date, has resulted in the deaths of at least 380,000 civilians to the decision to hold a president responsible for inciting a violent coup aside, Gaetz and Greene appearing onstage together is arguably one of the more disturbing recent GOP moments. Greene, who subscribes to “save the children” QAnon conspiracy theories, apparently finds no fault in rubbing shoulders with a man currently under federal investigation for trafficking underage girls across state lines. Nor does Greene seem to mind the corroborated reports that Gaetz showed other people in Congress naked pictures and videos of women he claims to have slept with.

Then again, Gaetz has previously claimed to be “proud” to be in Greene’s corner, despite her having said she believes the 9/11 terrorist attacks were a hoax, the mass shooting in Parkland was staged, and that the California wildfires were started by Jewish space lasers. 

“Marjorie Taylor Greene and I work in Washington, but we are not of Washington, and I must honestly tell you the leaders of both parties in Washington, D.C., don’t work for America first,” Gaetz said during the rally.

And while Gaetz and Greene standing side-by-side on stage, pontificating on the importance of moving the Republican Party to a Trump-first agenda, is truly the stuff of nightmares, the only thing scarier than Gaetz-Greene rallies is the idea that they will be successful in bringing more people to their side: The Villages is just their first stop. If the GOP remains full of Trump-like politicians: happy to disregard science, and willing to uphold white supremacy.

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If you have long nails and you’ve been leaving the undersides bare, Selena Gomez is about to turn your world upside down. For the artist’s appearance at Global Citizen’s Vax Live concert over the weekend, celebrity nail pro Tom Bachik designed a manicure that made a statement in the most understated way.

Yesterday, Bachik — who does the nails of celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Margot Robbie, and Selma Blair — shared a photo to Instagram of the creative design. “French twist with a flipside,” he called it, crediting the three classic OPI nail polishes he used: Big Apple Red, Alpine Snow, and Black Onyx. The glossy black and white come together to create a graphic deep-French tip, while the candy-apple red peeks out from the backside of Gomez’s nails, achieving the nail-art equivalent to the red bottom of a Christian Louboutin stiletto.

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The red-bottom manicure complemented the dress Gomez wore for her hosting duties during Vax Live: The Concert to Reunite the World, put on by international advocacy organization Global Citizen. The goal of the event, which featured special guests like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, was to inspire vaccine confidence and encourage people to make the COVID-19 vaccine available to everyone.

This spring, the exaggerated-French manicure has been the inspiration for so many celebrity nail-art designs. Kourtney Kardashian and her daughter Penelope recently sported matching leopard-print French tips, and Kylie Jenner played with her own version of the look using rainbow-bright polish and a ‘70s-inspired, abstract swirl pattern. But to her credit, Gomez seems to be the first to adapt the classic French with a pop of red on the “flipside.”

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Once again, we’re being reminded of just how much power Facebook wields when it comes to the public discourse. On Wednesday, Facebook’s own independent oversight board ruled that the company can continue to block former President Donald Trump from its platform. But the court-like panel also stated that Facebook must review the decision within six months. This peculiar process has frustrated many who feel that the platform has continuously failed to regulate how politicians like Trump can influence mass audiences with lies and conspiracies. It begs the question: How does Facebook still have this much control?

Facebook released a statement responding to the decision, saying that it believed suspending Trump’s account following the violent insurrection in Washington, D.C., in January was necessary. “We’re pleased the board has recognized that the unprecedented circumstances justified the exceptional measure we took,” reads the statement, released by Nick Clegg, VP of Global Affairs and Communications. He noted that the board did not specify what it thought was an appropriate duration for the suspension. Rather, it put the decision back in the hands of Facebook. “The board criticized the open-ended nature of the suspension, calling it an ‘indeterminate and standardless penalty,’” Clegg continued. 

In the meantime, Trump’s accounts will remain suspended while Facebook revisits the decision. The decision also applies to Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. Across both platforms, Trump had nearly 60 million followers before his accounts were suspended “indefinitely.”

The independent board, which is made up of a panel of around 20 former political leaders, journalists, and human rights activists, was assembled about a year ago for the purpose of deliberating the company’s content decisions. According to The New York Times, the idea was conceived by Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who wanted the independent body to act like a Supreme Court so that the public could have a way to appeal decisions made by the company when removing content that violates its policies. At the time, Zuckerberg said that neither he nor the company wanted to have the final say on speech.

According to CNN, the board could have made the decision itself. But in choosing to put the choice back in the hands of Facebook, it once again reminded the public of Zuckerberg’s powerful role in influencing not just public discourse, but political movements. It also reminds us of just how arbitrary the social media platform’s moderation decisions can be.

There are two concurrent issues here: the purposeful manipulation of social media platforms to spread misinformation and the companies’ reactive approach to addressing it.

Trump, like other politicians, invested major funding in running ad campaigns and using Facebook as a platform to spread misinformation for the furthering of his own personal agendas. One of many examples of Trump and his campaign being allowed to say whatever they wanted on Facebook with no consequence occurred last June. Organizations like PolitiFact and the Associated Press, part of Facebook’s independent network for weeding out falsehoods on the platform, unanimously found Trump’s claims that now-President Joe Biden wanted to “defund” police forces to be false, yet they continued to run freely on Facebook without any kind of warning or label because the platform specifically exempts politicians from its rules against deception.

So far, platforms like Facebook have taken a reactive stance to combat this rampant spread of false information. Like our judicial system, they often wait for acts to be committed before making a plan for how to respond, but by then, significant damage has been done. In the case of Trump, lies about the election, the COVID-19 pandemic, and his opponents spread far beyond Facebook’s ability to control them before the company came out with a plan of action.

And it’s almost impossible to make Facebook act quickly. Facebook, despite being old news in terms of zeitgeisty social platforms, retains a monopolistic hold on the dissemination of information. So much so that the Federal Trade Commission filed a groundbreaking antitrust lawsuit against the company seeking to break it up for manipulative and exploitative practices. More than 40 states have joined in accusing the company of buying up its rivals in an attempt to illegally squash competition. With this artificially heightened position of influence, Facebook isn’t forced to hold politicians like Trump accountable for fear of being left behind by more fast-acting competitors. As a result, its inaction has been felt more deeply. 

Leading up to the election, Facebook shrugged off pressure from Congress by saying it would continue to allow political campaigns to use the site to push targeted advertisements to the electorate while refusing to strictly review the actual messages being sent out. Meanwhile, other social media behemoths like Twitter and Google responded by either banning political advertising or considerably limiting it. 

What does this mean for the future of fact-checking and the truth? Until we can address the monopoly of social media platforms, large companies like Facebook will be able to carry on with little recourse because their position of influence will remain unchallenged. They are enabled to act slowly because no one is threatening to leave them behind. Without alternatives and accountability, Facebook will continue to be in a position of power, both politically and socially — full stop.

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