Facebook said it would no longer grant public figures and politicians special exemptions from its content policies after the social media giant faced a firestorm of criticism for being unclear on how and why it treats the speech of world leaders like former President Donald Trump differently than any other user.
The change announced Friday came the same day Facebook said it would suspend Trump for two years and then decide whether to reinstate him.
Facebook’s Oversight Board upheld the decision to block Trump on its platforms last month but advised the company that its rules should apply equally to everyone.
Facebook froze Trump’s accounts following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. At the time, Facebook said two posts praised the attack in violation of its policies.
“Considerations of newsworthiness should not take priority when urgent action is needed to prevent significant harm,” the board told Facebook.
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The recommendations made by the Oversight Board – a quasi-independent panel of experts funded by Facebook – included rapidly escalating political posts from highly influential users to specialists inside the company who are “insulated from political and economic interference, as well as undue influence.”
As part of Friday’s announcement, Facebook said it would remove content from world leaders if “the risk of harm outweighs the public interest.”
“We allow certain content that is newsworthy or important to the public interest to remain on our platform – even if it might otherwise violate our Community Standards. We may also limit other enforcement consequences, such as demotions, when it is in the public interest to do so,” Facebook said.
But, moving forward, when it judges the newsworthiness of content, it will not treat content posted by politicians differently than that of any other user, Facebook said, “measuring whether the public interest value of the content outweighs the potential risk of harm by leaving it up.”
Penalties for violations can range from suspension for one month to suspension for two years.
Previously the speech of world leaders was much less likely to be restricted or removed when they violated the social media company’s content moderation policies.
The kid-gloves treatment of political speech by world leaders has drawn intense scrutiny inside and outside the company, particularly the controversial decision to leave up Trump’s posts about the Minneapolis protests that warned, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
“Facebook took far too long to do what was right and obvious to everyone. The company had long staked its rules regarding politicians to a wrong-headed notion of free expression, which privileged the speech rights of the powerful over those of everyone else,” Carmen Scurato, senior policy counsel for advocacy group Free Press, said in a statement.
She also criticized the announcement as “light on the details of how content moderation will change in practice or when they will institute them.”
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“While the company claims to have reined in the abuses of dishonest politicians, it has left open opportunities for them to continue spreading the hate and lies that Facebook’s business model relies upon,” Scurato said. “Facebook must stop all exemptions for those with outsize power and influence to violate the platform’s Community Standards.”
A group of critics who call themselves the Real Facebook Oversight Board said Facebook did not need an Oversight Board and a team of law professors “to tell them dictators and authoritarians were running wild on their platforms.”
“Facebook isn’t even committing to taking down dangerous, racist, violent or insurrectionist content from authoritarian leaders,” the statement said. “They are simply committing to labeling it, using its ‘newsworthiness exemption’ to leave up posts that should otherwise be removed.”
The Facebook Oversight Board last month ruled that suspending Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts was the right move, but said it was not appropriate to impose an indefinite suspension and instructed the company to review the matter within six months, opening the door to Trump’s possible return.
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs and communications, said at the time that Facebook would consider the board’s decision and “determine an action that is clear and proportionate.”
On Friday, Facebook shared a podcast in which Clegg discussed the new enforcement protocols the company developed for public figures during periods of civil unrest.
According to the protocols, Facebook will consider the severity of the violation and the public figure’s history on the platform, their influence over and relationship to individuals engaged in violence and the severity of the violence.
After an account’s suspension, Facebook will decide whether “the risk to public safety has receded” before reinstating it.
Clegg said he hoped instances in which public figures including government leaders, politicians and others, use their presence to foment violence will be “very, very rare.”
“I mean, I think candidly we never foresaw that we would need an enforcement protocol to lay out penalties for that situation,” he said.
In Trump’s case, Clegg told Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution, “we think the events in early January justify the imposition of the highest level, the highest tier of penalty.”
Trump lost his direct link to supporters when he was booted from the nation’s top social media platforms following the Capitol attack. He has relied instead on a patchwork of press releases and personal messages, television interviews, emails and robocalls to reach supporters. This week, he pulled the plug on a blog “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” due to low readership.
