Mark Zuckerberg announced changes to the platform’s policies that are intended to calm spirits and stop the boycott of advertisers.
These measures are taken in the context of the 2020 elections, so they try to cover different areas. And at the same time, Zuckerberg wants to make it clear that Facebook is actively fighting hate speech.
One of the new policies recalls the position of Twitter regarding the publications of politicians. In a way, it censoring the content if it violates the rules, but it does not remove the publication from the platform, since it considers it in the public interest.
Facebook follows a similar dynamic allowing certain posts, which violate the platform’s rules, to remain visible if it considers them to be of public value.
A handful of times a year, we leave content that would otherwise violate our policies if the public interest value outweighs the risk of harm.
Unlike Twitter, it does not warn users of this exception in Facebook policies, the posts are simply still visible on the platform. Zuckerberg mentions that this will change, since tagging these posts, as a warning, to raise awareness among users:
We will allow people to share this content to condemn it, just like we do other problematic content, because this is an important part of how we discuss what is acceptable in our society, but we will add a message to tell people that the content we sharing may violate our policies.
A measure that can be a bit confusing, and even counterproductive. Along with this statement, Mark Zuckerberg also noted that these exceptions do not include content that incites hatred and violence, as they will be directly removed from the platform, regardless of who they belong to.
