Facebook

Facebook finally wakes up, will start flagging politicians’ posts that violate its policies

But, like, it’s still Facebook so…

by
Josiah Motley
June 29, 2020

Image: Unsplash

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After Mark Zuckerberg noted that Facebook “shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth,” it looks like the company is taking a step back to look at its policies and how they affect not just “normal” people, but politicians, as well. Zuckerberg announced the updates via Facebook at the end of last week.

Essentially, Zuckerberg explained Facebook’s initial reasoning but goes on to say that changes are being made that still allow for people to share news that may violate Facebook policies, but it will add alerts letting people know that the content may not adhere to Facebook guidelines. Most notably, there are no exemptions to this, including content from politicians and other government officials.

In the post, Zuckerberg states, “We will soon start labeling some of the content we leave up because it is deemed newsworthy, so people can know when this is the case. We’ll allow people to share this content to condemn it, just like we do with other problematic content, because this is an important part of how we discuss what’s acceptable in our society — but we’ll add a prompt to tell people that the content they’re sharing may violate our policies.”

https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10112048980882521

In addition to this upcoming change, Facebook also outlined things regarding voter suppression and misinformation and revealed that the company is working on a “Voting Information Center” where people can find factual information regarding voting.

The final thing mentioned in Zuckerberg’s post relates somewhat to something the company is currently dealing with – companies pulling Facebook ads due to the content ads are being served beside. While Facebook isn’t directly addressing that, the company will start tightening restrictions on what paid content can contain, and will deny more ads. From the post, “Specifically, we’re expanding our ads policy to prohibit claims that people from a specific race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, gender identity or immigration status are a threat to the physical safety, health or survival of others.

Overall, these are all good steps, but Facebook is a raging dumpster fire of false information and shitty people and fighting that is a gargantuan task.

What do you think? Happy to see Facebook announcing these changes or is it all just lip service? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.