Facebook is reportedly planning to end a policy that effectively exempts politicians from content moderation rules.
The Verge reported on Thursday that the social media company is expected to announce its new policy on Friday. The change comes as Facebook faces increased criticism, from journalists, lawmakers and its own employees, for allowing world leaders and politicians to use its platform to spread misinformation, quash criticism and harass opponents.
The company is also expected to announce a response to its independent oversight board, which recently advised that Donald Trump’s Facebook account should not be reinstated. The platform had suspended Trump’s account after the former president shared posts in which he seemed to praise the rioters who stormed the US capitol in the deadly 6 January riots.
As part of its non-binding recommendations, the board said the same rules should apply to all users and that Facebook’s existing policies, such as deciding when material is too newsworthy to remove or when to take actions on an influential account, need to be more clearly communicated to users. The board also said that heads of state and government officials can have a greater power to cause harm.
Facebook declined to comment.
Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have long contended that companies shouldn’t censor what politicians share. Although it has taken some steps to curb misinformation shared by certain leaders in the US, amid increased scrutiny, a Guardian investigation revealed that it allowed major abuses of its platform in small, non-western countries.
The Guardian reported in April that the platform “has repeatedly failed to take timely action when presented with evidence of rampant manipulation and abuse of its tools by political leaders around the world”.
The policy Facebook is expected to announce this week will stop short of subjecting posts by politicians to the same independent fact-checking that other sources share. However, the new policy will broaden the moderator’s ability to enforce harassment rules against politicians, according to the Verge.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, has long argued that the company should not police politicians’ speech. The company currently exempts politicians’ posts and ads from its third-party factchecking program and its “newsworthiness exemption” allows politicians’ rule-breaking posts on the site if the public interest outweighs the harm – though Facebook said it did not apply its newsworthiness allowance in the Trump case.
In the board’s recommendations it stressed that considerations of “newsworthiness” should not take priority when urgent action is needed on the platform to prevent “significant harm”.
The board gave Facebook six months to decide on a “proportionate response” in the Trump case, which could see the former president’s account restored, permanently blocked or suspended for a definite period of time.
Facebook has not yet announced a decision on whether the former president will be restored to its platforms.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
