Facebook: Zuckerberg Supports The Black Community and is Set To Review Existing Policies
Mark Zuckerberg states that Facebook is planning to look at its policies that are related to voter suppression, state use of force, and content moderation since the company is currently experiencing backlash from most of its employees regarding its idleness on contentious posts made by President Donald Trump. On the other hand, Microsoft is rolling its family safety app that protects users from the nefarious content found online.
Zuckerberg’s Statement
Not too long ago, Zuckerberg released a statement addressed to his employees that he also shared on his Facebook page later on. He acknowledged that his decision with regards to Trump’s posts made a lot of people disappointed, angry, and hurt.
The CEO and co-founder of Facebook also tackled the issue about the protests that were happening all over the United States and in various parts of the world right after George Floyd’s death. He addressed the Black community members, saying that he stands with them, and their lives are important.
Reviewing Policies
Zuckerberg’s statement was released several days after he led an argumentative town hall together with Facebook workers. Most of them expressed their anger at the decision made by Facebook to not do anything about the posts uploaded by Trump. On the other hand, its rival social media platform Twitter, immediately identified Trump’s post to have violated its rules. Some of those controversial posts were about the mail-in ballots, and the other contained the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” all of these and more were marked by Twitter as something that gloried violence and was against their strict policies.
Zuckerberg assured everyone that Facebook would take a look at their policies, especially those under “civil unrest,” “instances of excessive use of police or state force,” and “the realities of voting in the midst of a pandemic.”
Stop Hate and Violence
Moreover, he also stated that Facebook would make an effort to remove any post that encourages violence, regardless of the user who posted it – instead of putting some kind of warning label to the post. When the CEO was questioned regarding Facebook’s decision to remain idle about Trump’s posts during the town hall that happened this week, he stated that the present Facebook policy doesn’t ensure the use of force since states are allowed to utilize force, legally, based on the published transcript by Recode. The transcript discussed how Zuckerberg insisted on having “balanced” conversation in terms of policy changes.
In his statement last Friday, he assured that Facebook will now take into consideration certain approaches to address problematic posts instead of taking it down or ignoring it. He also added that most people might think that they should’ve put a label on the posts made by the President in any way that they can. Generally, this kind of approach made him worried since it has a considerable risk of transforming their company to editorialize the content they don’t like, even if it doesn’t disobey any of their policies.
Zuckerberg ended his statement on a clear note that even though they are examining all areas, they might not be able to overhaul the entire policy.