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from the We-don't-need-no-steenkin-facts! dept.
Facebook this week finally put into writing what users—especially politically powerful users—have known for years: its community "standards" do not, in fact, apply across the whole community. Speech from politicians is officially exempt from the platform's fact checking and decency standards, the company has clarified, with a few exceptions.
Facebook communications VP Nick Clegg, himself a former member of the UK Parliament, outlined the policy in a speech and company blog post Tuesday.
Facebook has had a "newsworthiness exemption" to its content guidelines since 2016. That policy was formalized in late October of that year amid a contentious and chaotic US political season and three weeks before the presidential election that would land Donald Trump the White House.
Facebook at the time was uncertain how to handle posts from the Trump campaign, The Wall Street Journal reported. Sources told the paper that Facebook employees were sharply divided over the candidate's rhetoric about Muslim immigrants and his stated desire for a Muslim travel ban, which several felt were in violation of the service's hate speech standards. Eventually, the sources said, CEO Mark Zuckerberg weighed in directly and said it would be inappropriate to intervene. Months later, Facebook finally issued its policy.
"We're going to begin allowing more items that people find newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest—even if they might otherwise violate our standards," Facebook wrote at the time.
Source: ArsTechnica
(Score: 2) by hwertz on Friday September 27 2019, @04:51PM (3 children)
I mean, I don't like letting nutjob Trump lie, post racist bullshit, and so on either. You'd really hope someone running for office, or in office, could behave like a normal human being so having to block them or not for violating site standards would not be an issue. (I'm a libertarian so I do believe in absolutely in first ammendment rights, but Facebook after all owns their site so they also have the right to allow or block as they see fit.)
BUT, blocking someone running for office, or in office, given the nature of a site like Facebook would set a bad precedent, and it is perfectly reasonable for them to decide they will just keep out of it and let politicians post what they will. Also, it didn't work for nutjob Trump, but one would hope that when someone running for office lies, posts ugly rhetoric, contradicts themselves, threatens and bullies and so on, that they would be called out for it rather than elected to office; if these posts are just blocked instead, then the public can't see them to fully judge the candidate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @05:24PM
Yeah, I think you have gotten to the nub of the matter. It shouldn't be Facetwit's job to police political candidates. That should be a job for The People. Of course, when The People are a bunch of gibbering partisan morons...well, you get the clusterfuck we have now.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Friday September 27 2019, @05:39PM
I agree that Facebook should be the ones to decide what their fact checking policy is, but I think that that policy choice is bad.
Politicians are the ones that can do the most damage by spreading falsehoods. So if you're not going to fact check them, then don't bother fact checking anyone. Everyone should be treated the same way whether they are public figures or not.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rigrig on Saturday September 28 2019, @02:57AM
No one remembers the singer.