Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg streamed an internal town hall live on Friday.
Screenshot by Queenie Wong / CNET
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, said on Friday that the social network will begin labeling content that it believes is current but would violate its rules. Facebook will also block a wider category of hateful content in ads. This happens when big brands pull advertisements from the social network in protest.
The labeling does not apply to content that suppress voting or encourage violence. Facebook has announced that it will remove them, even if they come from politicians. Twitter, a competing social network, has flagged tweets from President Donald Trump that violate his rules on the glorification of violence.
Facebook will also block ads that claim that people of certain racial or ethnic groups are endangering the physical safety, health, or survival of others. It also prohibits advertisements that express contempt, dismissal or disgust for immigrants and refugees, or suggest that they are somehow inferior.
“We want to do more here to ban the kind of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric used to sow discord,” said Zuckerberg in an internal town hall that was streamed live on Facebook.
The company will add links to voting posts, including from politicians who direct users to its new voting information center. The links help Facebook to edit trickier posts where it is unclear whether the user is trying to suppress voting, e.g. For example, the claim that a city has been identified as a COVID-19 hotspot. “This is not a judgment of whether the posts themselves are correct, but we want people to have access to relevant information in both cases,” said Zuckerberg. Facebook said it would also ban posts that make false claims that US immigration and customs officials search immigration papers at polling stations and coordinated threats that affect voting.
Facebook does not send posts and advertisements from politicians to fact checkers. This policy has been criticized by legislators, interest groups and their own employees. The new changes don’t fully relate to how Facebook interpreted its rules regarding Trump’s controversial posts. In May, Twitter labeled two Trump tweets that contained false claims about mail-in ballots, but Facebook took no action against the same posts on its social network. Facebook found that Trump was having a political debate about mail-in voting and was not directly preventing people from voting. Twitter also added another note to Trump’s tweets, responding to police protests against the death of George Floyd’s murder by saying, “When the looting begins, the shots begin.” Twitter found the post violated its rules against the glorification of violence, but Facebook said the statements did not violate its policies, as Trump referred the National Guard and the company read it as a warning against the use of state violence.
Facebook was under pressure to do more about misinformation and hate speech from advertisers. The Anti-Defamation League, NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Colors of Change, Free Press and Common Sense are calling on companies to stop buying ads on Facebook this month of July. This would put the groups under pressure on Facebook to use their $ 70 billion in annual advertising revenue to support people who are victims of racism and hatred and to increase security for private groups on the website . The consumer goods giant Unilever, the telecommunications company Verizon, the ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s and the outdoor clothing brand The North Face are some of the most important brands that have joined the #StopHateforProfit campaign.
Despite efforts to fight hate speech, civil rights activists say Facebook has allowed content that could lead to violence against protesters who are fighting for racial justice after the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery and Rayshard Brooks.
According to the ADL, almost 100 brands have joined the boycott. The groups are asking Facebook to make various changes, including creating a separate moderation pipeline for hate speech, which allows certain people who have been harassed or hated to speak to a live person on Facebook and tell advertisers how often their content has been shown next to posts that Facebook removed for misinformation or hate speech.