Facebook’s decision to suspend Donald Trump’s account was too little, too late.

For months, he used social media to perpetuate groundless and incendiary lies about the 2020 election. His posts about “voter fraud” or “#StopTheSteal” -- none of which provided a shred of evidence for their claims -- were shared over 12 million times, based on our analysis.

And even though voting rights groups like Common Cause warned Facebook that giving Trump free rein to lie on its platform was a threat to our democracy -- it took the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol to finally move them to action.

But as of now, Facebook has only “indefinitely suspended” Trump’s account -- meaning they may be on the cusp of letting him back onto the platform to wreak additional havoc with his disinformation, abuse, and hate speech. We cannot let that happen.

Facebook has created a new Oversight Board that will review its decision to ban Trump -- but by design, it’s accountable to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, not the public. That means it’s no substitute for government action to hold Facebook accountable.

But the most impactful thing that this Oversight Board and Facebook can do is decide to permanently ban Trump. If Facebook’s policies are to have any meaning, they must be strictly enforced -- and we’d expect any other Facebook user who abused the platform like Trump has to be kicked off.

Facebook cannot give Trump another opportunity to mislead voters and stoke chaos again on its website. And if they don’t listen to us right now and start enforcing their own civic integrity policies -- we’ll demand government action to hold Facebook accountable.