Facebook will stop treating politicians differently
Politically exposed people will have to consider the same guidelines as other users.
Social media giant Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) plans to halt its policies, which have received a lot of criticism around the world. The policy is used to protect politicians from rules of content moderation. The change, slated to go into effect before Friday, comes after Facebook's oversight board review. The group reviewed Facebook's content decisions. Although the board supported the decision regarding the account of Donald Trump, the former President of the United Nations, it condemned the preferential treatment of other politicians. The board said the rules should be the same for everyone. Facebook was given until June 5 to respond to policy recommendations. Facebook also plans to empower users by warning them if they have a tendency to break the rules, which could result in their account being suspended. Some news outlets also reported that the company's employees intervened to protect political content-related sites from penalties. For Facebook, these changes are remarkable. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company should refrain from monitoring politicians' speech. The company's executives, including the CEO, said politicians 'speeches are already under scrutiny and that private actors should refrain from censoring politicians' words. Facebook has maintained a list of political accounts that are not faced with the content moderation protocol or face verification processes that apply to others for a number of years. In 2019, some company employees called for the list to be closed. They argued that some people fall for false information shared by elected officials. However, Nick Clegg, Facebook's vice president of global affairs, defended the policy, saying the company considers politicians' speech to be newsworthy. He added that the company will only crack down on comments from politicians that cause physical harm. Messages or videos shared by politicians, which they usually take from other portals, are also checked. According to the new rules of Facebook, posts that the politicians post directly would be subject to fact checking. In addition, the new policy also mentions that the company could exempt some posts from deletion. However, Facebook will announce when it will do that.