SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @02:39AM (3 children)
Heh, another butthurt bigot mad that racists are getting dis-invited. Truly you should stop consuming conservative media, so much disinformation designed to make you frightened. I'm still waiting to see the wave of violence from liberals/leftists/marxists/demoncrats that even comes close to rightwing terrorism.
Maybe address your own ideological extremists before crying wolf.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Mykl on Wednesday July 01 2020, @03:01AM (2 children)
You clearly have a problem with comprehension. I would describe myself as slightly left of center (certainly more to left in US terms). Criticism of the left does not make me right-wing. Have another read of my post - anything in that that suggests I support right wing positions? Didn't think so.
There are Republicans who don't like Trump. There are Democrats who don't like Biden or AOC. There are Communists who didn't like Che Guevara. There are facists who didn't like Mussolini.
But if you keep treating politics like a sports fan and blindly support "your side" no matter what they do then you will have contributed to the downfall of Democracy.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @03:35AM (1 child)
Well maybe if I saw more pushback against rightwing bullshit around here I wouldn't pigeon hole someone bitching about "the left" as a rightwing bigot. So far those are the vast majority of ideologies that are all annoyed at "the left" right now.
My internment camp joke was specifically crafted to trigger the stupidity of the rightwing, they have been crying wolf about it for so long while giving the children-in-cages a total pass. I do not accept that level of bullshit.
Right now politics IS tribal. The GOP is pushing literal fascism while online trolls are trying to convince people that liberals are the REAL threat. Antifa is not even an organized group and has committed far less violence, and it is often in reaction to LITERAL fascists promoting genocide.
If you are truly left of center then you'd be much more concerned about Trump and the GOP, but personally I haven't noticed Mykl posting anything along those lines. Go concern troll someone else, the downfall of democracy is being led by Trump and the GOP who are literally disenfranchising voters.
I am so tired of this "I'm a liberal but you're being a meany pants to conservatives." Uh huh, sure thing bub. Tolerance of the right, demonizing of the left.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 01 2020, @05:06AM
Well, you're getting pushback, right? Sounds like it's working.