Facebook employees wanted Trump post removed
October 21, 2016, 05:10 pm
Facebook employees wanted Trump post removed
http://thehill.com/sites/default/fil...?itok=WPN7QPn6
A number of Facebook employees campaigned to censor and remove some of Donald Trump's controversial posts that potentially qualified as hate speech under Facebook's guidelines, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
Several sources told the newspaper that the Republican presidential nominee's call for a ban on Muslim immigration sparked outrage across the Facebook community.Trump linked his proposal to his Facebook page in December. Muslim employees of Facebook blasted the company for not removing it.
Fearing the implication of censoring a presidential candidate, Facebook’s head of global policy management, Monika Bickert, made the decision to keep the post.
However, according to the report, the controversy made its way to the desk of CEO Mark Zuckerberg. After reviewing the internal complaint, Zuckerberg made a decision that removing a post from a presidential candidate would be an inappropriate course of action.
Moreover, Zuckerberg has been pushing to establish Facebook as a nonpartisan social media platform and defended Facebook director Peter Thiel's $1.25 million donation to the GOP nominee.
Facebook also recently committed to loosening its censoring standards when it comes to political speech in general.
“In the weeks ahead, 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,” members of Facebook’s policy team wrote on Friday, according to the report.
Sources told the Journal that Zuckerberg continued to receive internal complaints and questions about Trump's rhetoric, with many employees accusing Facebook of a double standard.
The company responded by shutting down the questions and stating that the matter had already been resolved.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...as-hate-speech
