TECHNOLOGY
Zuckerberg says Facebook will revisit policies in
wake of Trump backlash
The announcement comes after the tech giant's inaction
on the president's posts sparked uproar, in and out of the company.
By
CRISTIANO LIMA
06/05/2020
07:33 PM EDT
Facebook
chief Mark Zuckerberg said Friday the social media giant will reexamine its
policies against violent threats and voter suppression after facing intense
backlash over its recent handling of incendiary posts by President Donald
Trump, particularly from its own employees.
In a
lengthy Facebook post, Zuckerberg said he wanted to “acknowledge the real pain
expressed by members of our community” over the company’s decision not to take
any action on a Trump post that appeared to threaten protesters with violence.
The move has sparked unrest at the tech behemoth, with scores of staffers
publicly denouncing the decision and skipping work in protest.
In
response, the tech mogul said Friday the company will be revisiting its policies
against “threats of state use of force” and voter suppression efforts, as well
as its current “binary” standard of either taking down or leaving up posts that
may incite violence.
“We're
going to review potential options for handling violating or partially-violating
content aside from the binary leave-it-up or take-it-down decisions,” he wrote.
“I know many of you think we should have labeled the President's posts in some
way last week.”
Zuckerberg
also teased an array of other possible follow-up actions, including making the
company’s decision-making process on content decisions more transparent,
expanding the diversity of groups involved in shaping its decisions and
creating new products that “advance racial justice.” But the post contained
little to no concrete commitments.
“I want to
be clear that while we are looking at all of these areas, we may not come up
with changes we want to make in all of them,” Zuckerberg wrote.
Facebook
has been hit with intense scrutiny since leaving up a Trump post about
protesters that read, in part, "When the looting starts, the shooting
starts." Democrats on Capitol Hill have hammered Facebook’s inaction as
“embarrassing” and cowardly, while Republicans have lauded the restraint citing
free speech concerns.
But the
controversy has boiled over internally at the company, where employees who in
the past have been reluctant to speak out against Zuckerberg have openly
rebuked his high-profile decision.
Pressure
for action first began mounting on Zuckerberg when rival Twitter slapped a
fact-checking label on a Trump tweet that made unsubstantiated claims about
mail-in voting, then increased when Twitter added a warning label on the
"shooting" message, which the president posted across the social
media platforms.
Zuckerberg
later said that while he personally had a "visceral negative
reaction" to Trump's "divisive and inflammatory rhetoric," the
company decided to leave up Trump's "shooting" post because of
Facebook's commitment to "free expression" and because the message
could inform users about potential government use of force.
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