Facebook: Messages from politicians who violate our rules will not be deleted
Facebook says it will in principle not remove messages from politicians that go against its own guidelines for the community. With this, Facebook is following a similar policy change that Twitter made earlier.
Facebook has had an exception for newsworthy posts since 2016 and that is now being extended to posts that politicians post on the platform. So says Nick Clegg, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom and now Facebook’s vice president of communications. From now on, messages from politicians are therefore automatically labeled as newsworthy, which the community must be able to ‘see and hear’.
There are a few exceptions to the policy of not removing messages from politicians that go against their own rules. For example, placing advertisements must still comply with the rules and policy regarding advertisements. And if politicians post messages that could endanger people, they are still removed.
According to Clegg, when assessing newsworthiness, a trade-off is made between the public interest of freedom of expression and the risk of harm. The extent of damage that may occur is also considered. For example, if certain content incites or provokes violence, this can create a security problem that goes beyond the importance of free speech.
Clegg reiterates that it is not Facebook’s role to intervene when politicians say something. As a result, Facebook will not offer statements by politicians to its own fact-checkers. That position became clear last month, when a political party announced its intention to introduce a ‘death tax’ during the election campaign in Australia. Australian Labor Party politicians thought this was fake news and wanted it removed from Facebook, but the company said it didn’t want to get involved in the debate.
As for controlling what appears on Facebook during elections, the company says it has learned lessons from mistakes made in 2016. According to Facebook, Russia then tried to influence the American elections through its platform by, among other things, spreading disinformation. The company says it has since taken the necessary measures so that this should not happen again. The latter was previously disputed by Bits of Freedom. In May, the organization indicated that the measures to prevent influencing elections are not working properly. For example, a previously promised restriction on the placing of political advertisements was relatively easy to circumvent.