Politics

Facebook employees wanted Trump’s posts removed as ‘hate speech,’ Zuckerberg intervenes

Facebook -- Zuckerberg
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On Friday, USA Today reported that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg intervened after employees of the social media giant pushed to have posts by GOP nominee Donald Trump removed as “hate speech.”  Some even threatened to quit.

According to USA Today:

Facebook employees pushed to remove some of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s Facebook posts — such as one proposing the ban of Muslims from entering the U.S. — from the service as hate speech that violated the giant social network’s policies, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The decision not to remove the Trump posts was made by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the newspaper reported.

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Employees complained that Facebook was changing the rules for Trump and some who review content on Facebook threatened to quit.

“When we review reports of content that may violate our policies, we take context into consideration. That context can include the value of political discourse,” the company said in an emailed statement. “Many people are voicing opinions about this particular content and it has become an important part of the conversation around who the next U.S. president will be. For those reasons, we are carefully reviewing each report and surrounding context relating to this content on a case by case basis.”

As regular readers of this site probably know, we’ve been quite critical of Facebook for some of the actions moderators have taken — like banning a user over a 2012 Trump campaign button showing only the candidate’s face.  According to Facebook, the picture violated their rules on nudity.

I’ve even co-authored a book about how the social media site enables militant Islamic jihad through its Orwellian enforcement system.

But Zuckerberg got it right this time, and we have no problem giving credit where it’s due.

Related:

If you haven’t checked out and liked our Facebook page, please go here and do so.

And if you’re as concerned about Facebook censorship as we are, go here and order this new book:

Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad
Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad – Source: Author (used with permission)

Joe Newby

A 10-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Joe ran for a city council position in Riverside, Calif., in 1991 and managed successful campaigns for the Idaho state legislature. Co-author of "Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad," Joe wrote for Examiner.com from 2010 until it closed in 2016 and his work has been published at Newsbusters, Spokane Faith and Values and other sites. He now runs the Conservative Firing Line.

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