Mark Zuckerberg says Fb will overview its policies in regards to the state use of force, voter suppression and content moderation, as the corporate faces a backlash from lots of its own staff over its inaction on controversial posts by President Donald Trump.
In a notice to employees that he later shared on his Facebook page on Friday, Zuckerberg acknowledged that the decision about Trump’s posts “left lots of you angry, disappointed and hurt.”
The Fb cofounder and CEO additionally addressed the protests which have erupted across America and all over the world following the death of George Floyd.
“To members of our Black neighborhood: I stand with you. Your lives matter. Black lives matter,” he wrote.
Zuckerberg’s remarks come days after he hosted a contentious city corridor with Fb employees, numerous whom expressed outrage at Fb’s decision not to take action towards posts by Trump that rival platform Twitter flagged as having violated its personal rules. A type of posts referred to mail-in ballots, whereas one other containing the phrase “when the looting begins, the capturing starts” was labeled by Twitter for flouting its policies on glorifying violence.
Fb will review its policies on each those fronts, Zuckerberg said, particularly accounting for “instances of excessive use of police or state pressure” and “civil unrest,” in addition to “the realities of voting within the midst of a pandemic.”
Zuckerberg has previously mentioned Fb would take down any put up that incites violence — regardless of who posted it — relatively than placing any kind of warning label on it. When questioned concerning the decision to leave Trump’s posts up during this week’s town hall, he mentioned Fb’s policies currently do not cowl state use of force as a result of states are legally allowed to make use of force, based on a transcript published by Recode. In response to the transcript, Zuckerberg urged a “balanced” discussion around changing that coverage.
In Friday’s notice, he mentioned the company will now think about approaches to problematic content other than simply leaving it up or taking it down.
“I do know a lot of you assume we should have labeled the President’s posts in some way final week,” he mentioned, including that he has begun inner discussions on how to approach these questions in the future.
“Generally, I fear that this approach has a threat of leading us to editorialize on the content we don’t like even if it does not violate our policies, so I feel we need to proceed very carefully,” he added.
However, he stopped short of guaranteeing imminent amendments to Fb’s policies.
“I need to be clear that while we’re all of those areas, we could not give you changes we want to make in all of them,” he said.
