Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will review its content policies relating to threats of state use of force, after the chief executive faced a backlash from employees for declining to take action on controversial posts by President Donald Trump.

Mr Zuckerberg, chief executive, committed to reviewing the social media group’s policies “allowing discussion and threats of state use of force”, as well around voter suppression.
He added the company had also started exploring potential options for violating content “aside from the binary leave-it-up or take-it-down decisions”, such as labelling or adding warnings to posts. However, he cautioned that such an approach “has a risk of leading us to editorialise on content we don’t like even if it doesn’t violate our policies”.
Mr Zuckerberg has faced intense pressure from staff and critics after he refused to take action on a post from President Trump in which he used the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”, in reference to the continuing protests around the country.
Mr Zuckerberg argued that the post did not violate Facebook’s policies around inciting violence, and that private companies should not be the “arbiter of truth”. The decision prompted dozens of Facebook employees to criticize Mr Zuckerberg: some staged virtual walkouts, while others threatened to resign.
By contrast, smaller social media rival Twitter has added a warning label in front of an identical post by Mr Trump on its platform, as well as labelling two other tweets by the president related to postal voting as potentially misleading.
Mr Zuckerberg also added that the company would review the transparency of its decision-making process around challenging content, as well as whether to change anything structurally in order to make the decision-making more inclusive.
The chief executive faced a similar backlash last year for his decision not to fact check political advertising, and promised to explore limiting the “microtargeting” of such adverts to small, targeted groups of users to assuage critics’ concerns. In the end, however, Facebook opted to continue offering microtargeting and instead expanded transparency around political adverts.


Author: Hannah Murphy

https://www.ft.com/content/e74c731f-bf29-48cf-84ee-17d1b31fa614