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Zuckerberg once wanted to sanction Trump. Then Facebook wrote rules that accommodated him.
Hours after President Trump’s incendiary post last month about sending the military to the Minnesota protests, Trump called Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
The post put the company in a difficult position, Zuckerberg told Trump, according to people familiar with the discussions. The same message was hidden by Twitter, the strongest action ever taken against a presidential post.
To Facebook’s executives in Washington, the post didn’t appear to violate its policies, which allows leaders to post about government use of force if the message is intended to warn the public — but it came right up to the line. The deputies had already contacted the White House earlier in the day with an urgent plea to tweak the language of the post or simply delete it, the people said.
Eventually, Trump posted again, saying his comments were supposed to be a warning after all. Zuckerberg then went online to explain his rationale for keeping the post up, noting that Trump’s subsequent explanation helped him make his decision.
[...] Zuckerberg talks frequently about making choices that stand the test of time, preserving the values of Facebook and subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram for all of its nearly 3 billion monthly users for many years into the future — even when those decisions are unpopular or controversial.
At one point, however, he wanted a different approach to Trump.
Before the 2016 election, the company largely saw its role in politics as courting political leaders to buy ads and broadcast their views, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking.
But that started to change in 2015, as Trump’s candidacy picked up speed. In December of that year, he posted a video in which he said he wanted to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. The video went viral on Facebook and was an early indication of the tone of his candidacy.
Outrage over the video led to a companywide town hall, in which employees decried the video as hate speech, in violation of the company’s policies. And in meetings about the issue, senior leaders and policy experts overwhelmingly said they felt that the video was hate speech, according to three former employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Zuckerberg expressed in meetings that he was personally disgusted by it and wanted it removed, the people said. Some of these details were previously reported.
At one of the meetings, Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president for policy, drafted a document to address the video and shared it with leaders including Zuckerberg’s top deputy COO Sheryl Sandberg and Vice President of Global Policy Joel Kaplan, the company’s most prominent Republican.
[...] Ultimately, Zuckerberg was talked out of his desire to remove the post in part by Kaplan, according to the people. Instead, the executives created an allowance that newsworthy political discourse would be taken into account when making decisions about whether posts violated community guidelines.
That allowance was not formally written into the policies, even though it informed ad hoc decision-making about political speech for the next several years, according to the people. When a formal newsworthiness policy was announced in October 2016, in a blog post by Kaplan, the company did not discuss Trump’s role in shaping it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @06:15PM (1 child)
Who's writing the screenplay for this stinker? It's not even good fiction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @08:10PM
I gave up on Hollyshit. Even plots of mediocare things form 2000s are lightyears ahead of of today's garbagre. I'm watching stuff I wouldnt have watched 20 years ago because today's stuff is just so bad.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday June 30 2020, @07:37PM (2 children)
Remember Usenet from the 1980s? When the general public was becoming aware of microcomputers. "PCs". But most people had never heard of the internet. The Web did not exist.
There was Usenet. Only academic institutions and some corporations were on the net and had Usenet.
If you remember those days, it was instructive. When I first saw Facebook, I realized, from what I learned about human nature on Usenet what a disaster this was going to be. I never bothered to create an account. (ditto for tweeter)
Not only was I right, but it went way beyond any horror I imagined. Little did I realize that Facebook (and Twitter too!) would erode and maybe destroy the basic fabric of civil society.
Every performance optimization is a grate wait lifted from my shoulders.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @11:27PM
FB and T et al are merely letters to fhe editor writ largena d more often. These publishers have the same options about not posting everything, yet they choose to do so, maybe with little notes attached.
Other than the general disclaimer never recall seeing a L2E being marked for fact check.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Wednesday July 01 2020, @01:28AM
Facebook is just the Apple of social networks. All the features it has are slightly polished but dumbed down versions of what older web sites were already doing. Also, just like the headphone jack, for some reason, the FB header bar was on the bottom for awhile (but I can't find any screenshots of it).
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Wednesday July 01 2020, @12:12AM (2 children)
didn't Zuckerburg once make some noise about going into politics?
The new rules might have been so Z could get in good with high ranking politicians who might support him later when he really did run for some office.
I mean Trump had ZERO political experience but was able to effectively buy his way into the White House, Zuck might be thinking/planing to do the same.
although I might be mis-remembering things, i usually tune out almost everything after "Zuckerburg ...."
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 01 2020, @12:30AM
I think the major cause for this was the inability of both traditional parties to come with a better "sale pitch".
Which, given the quality of Trump as the elected "merchandise", says a lot about their quality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 01 2020, @12:32AM
Didn't your mother teach you that fart jokes aren't funny and civilized people don't make a fuss about farts? Even when they are brain farts. (large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford