Facebook has refused to take action against Trump's remarks

Facebook has refused to take action against Trump's remarks

Twitter reacted to the president's post, which suggested violence against protesters, leaving it under a warning label.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has defended his company's decision to allow Trump to post. Photo: Alex Brandon / AP

For the second time in a week, Twitter has taken unprecedented action against a tweet from Donald Trump, and Facebook has refused to take any action against the president's remarks.

Trump's threatening remarks on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram on Thursday night echoed, "Any difficulty and we will take control but, when the looting starts, the shots start," echoed the 19th-century police chief known for patrolling black neighborhoods with shotguns and dogs. Does. The murder of George Floyd, a black man who had begged for his life as a white police officer, was widely interpreted as a threat to violence and a potential incitement to violence against the two townspeople. Several minutes.

Witter responded that a policy had been formulated in June 2012 to address the theoretical-hypothetical situation in which any major world leader could harm the real-world in a way that violated his rules. The policy helps the company maintain the tweet for the purpose of accountability and public record but hides it behind a warning label.


"We have taken steps to prevent others from being motivated to commit acts of violence, but we have kept the tweet on Twitter because it is important that people will still be able to see the tweet in the context of a significant public issue," the agency explained.

On the other hand, Facebook has left Trump's post on the platform. There are clear rules against the agency's rhetoric that could incite or provoke violence, but it has taken no action against Trump's rhetoric. As of Friday evening, the Facebook post had been shared over 0005,000 times and received 1919,000 likes, 32,000 heart emojis and 6,600 laugh emojis.

The article was also overlined in a photo of Trump for the president's Instagram account, where it received more than 433,000 likes.

And while Facebook has made controversial decisions to exempt politicians from third-party fact-checking processes, there are no exceptions to inciting violence.

On Friday evening, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended Facebook's decision to allow the post, arguing that it has a policy to allow warnings about the use of force by state actors.


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It was not immediately clear whether that policy was previously explicitly published by Facebook. In 2012, a Facebook spokeswoman refused to clarify the company's policy on violence and hate speech by state actors on record. The guardian contacted Facebook to comment.


In a post on his personal Facebook page, Zuckerberg further suggested that if Facebook decided that Trump's post was intended to incite violence by civilians, they would drop it, writing: "We don't need to have a policy against Twitter. Which can incite violence because we believe that if a post incites violence, it should be removed regardless of whether it comes from politicians, whether it is newsworthy or not. "

Zuckerberg also criticized Trump, saying: "Personally, I have a very negative reaction to this kind of divisive and inflammatory speech ... I strongly disagree with how the President spoke about it, but I believe that people should see it for themselves, because ultimately Accountability for those in power can only happen when their speeches are openly investigated. ”

The threat of violence by state actors on its platforms has long been a complex issue for the organization. Buddhist extremists and military officials in Myanmar used Facebook to incite hatred and violence against the country's Muslim minority, the Rohingya, in 2017 - a campaign of ethnic cleansing that killed 25,000 Rohingya and forcibly displaced another 700,000.

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Facebook acknowledged its failure in Myanmar in 2018 and eventually banned many of the hateful propagandists and military leaders for inciting genocide.