Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, says that social media platforms shouldn’t check the president for facts.
Angela Lang / CNET
Facebook employees have reportedly been unhappy with the social media giant’s stance on the fact-checking and warning statements this week applies Contributions by US President Donald Trump to the Minnesota protests and postal ballot papers. Internal message board posts showed that employees are calling Facebook managers to explain their attitude. The edge reported Friday.
Facebook’s internal complaints follow a week of escalating friction between the president and social media companies, especially Twitter, a Facebook competitor. On Tuesday, Trump tweeted that mail-in ballots would be nothing less than “essentially fraudulent,” which led to it Twitter to assign a label to the comments saying that they contain “potentially misleading information”. Trump followed up with a tweet that he was taking a “big deal” against social media companies.
The situation culminated in Trump signed an executive order for social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook on Thursday. The ordinance instructs the Department of Commerce to request the Federal Communications Commission to repeal or restrict Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, a law that protects online platforms from liability for user-published content.
“The censorship and bias is a threat to freedom itself,” Trump card said when signing. He accused social media companies of not being “neutral platforms”.
On Friday morning, Twitter also posted a tweet from the president about protests and riots in Minnesota George Floyd’s death in police custody. This time, Twitter hid Trump’s tweet after finding that he was violating his “glorifying violence” rules.
Look at that:
Trump issues the order to stop the alleged “untested power” …
2:03
Social media platforms should not check the president for factsFacebook boss Mark Zuckerberg said on Thursday.
Facebook employees have reportedly used internal message boards to trigger frustration with Friday’s stance and lack of an explanation as to why Trump’s Twitter tweets posted on Facebook were not against the social media platform’s community standards violate.
“All of this indicates a very high risk of violent escalation and unrest in November,” wrote one employee. “If we don’t pass the test case here, history won’t judge us kindly.”
The decision to publish the post on the protests in Minnesota on Facebook made another employee “sad and frankly ashamed”. The employee added that “hopefully someone is still discussing somewhere about how and why this is clearly in favor of violence”.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.