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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: 2, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday July 01 2020, @01:32AM (11 children)
If only acceptable speech is protected, freedom of speech is illusory. Civil rights are not in place for the benefit of the most popular -- they are there to protect the least popular, because you never know when YOUR speech will be on unpopular side.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @02:48AM (7 children)
No one is stopping anyone from publishing their own speech. White supremacy and racism is not protected by anti-discrimination laws, but you're welcome to file lawsuits and try to force Facebook, Twitter, et. all to host such bile. Good luck, even the baker wasn't forced to bake a gay cake, he just couldn't refuse service to gay people since sexual orientation is a protected class.
It is funny how quickly you conservatives became the outraged whiners once you experienced a little push back from society.
How goes your prez? Still winning with all the gun regulation and literal fascism?
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Wednesday July 01 2020, @02:59AM (2 children)
Not a conservative. I'm just not an authoritarian and I can see how the law has failed to catch up with tech monopolies. The future is a dark place, the experiment in universal human rights is ending.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @08:21AM (1 child)
ah yes, your speech is totally infringed if you're not able to spam 300 million people's news feed.
*yawn*
Make your own service or STFU, you are an authoritarian complaining that platforms don't want specific speech. Should networks with children be forced to host porn and murder speech?
Obviously you have little clue about how Constitutional rights work.
(Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday July 01 2020, @12:26PM
If most people are allowed to spam 300 million peoples' news feeds (which I gather is not actually the case) and you're not, because of the content of your speech, that sure sounds like infringement of your speech to me.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 01 2020, @12:22PM (3 children)
If you're speaking of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado [supremecourt.gov], the baker, Jack Phillips was asked to bake what you term a "gay cake", but he refused to do so. He did offer other services to the couple getting married. For example:
The case was decided on a narrow aspect - the Colorado Civil Rights Commission which enforces certain anti-discrimination (of which sexual orientation is a protected class) didn't protect Jack Phillips's religious rights. The linked decision cites derogatory language used concerning Phillips's religious views and inconsistency in Phillips's case versus similar cases:
And a little further:
There's a huge difference between the baker and Facebook. The baker was committing an act of speech - putting a message and decoration on a cake, Facebook is not. They merely provide a public forum.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @12:46PM (2 children)
This isn't true. Facebook stopped being "merely a public forum" when they started including friend suggestions and ranking content (whether algorithmic or not). If they were "merely a public forum", they should have stopped at providing subscribe/unsubscribe/discover more buttons on the various feeds.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 02 2020, @12:54AM (1 child)
It's somewhat more nuanced an argument than claiming that using advanced technology, like a computer, makes it not a public forum, but it's the same fallacy. Just because they do things a little differently doesn't make a difference here.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 05 2020, @11:35PM
More accurately, a little difference from an ideal is not different enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @12:37PM (2 children)
Indeed. So, how do we handle speech that curtails the civil rights of the least popular?
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Wednesday July 01 2020, @04:52PM
If you are on the regressive left, which is trying to implement every horrific idea from the past from segregation to censorship, you cancel the speaker and cheer.
The problem with freedom is that it is fragile and subject to being undermined by those willing to engage in force. The only solution is for people to voluntarily agree to be pro-civil rights. Absent that agreement, there is no freedom because imposing freedom is oxymoronic (look at Afghanistan or Iraq for example). The regressive left is on the rise and absolutely refuses to countenance civil rights for anyone who disagrees with it. They refuse to agree to a system of freedom and so we're fucked. They have the population numbers, the sympathy of the press, and the willingness to use economic and physical violence. The only question is going to be which faction will gain enough power to impose its totalitarian views on everyone.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 05 2020, @04:22AM
How about starting by finding real world examples? Then get back to us.