Facebook says it doesn’t fact check or block politicians content even it violates its policies

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Facebook has a big issue with fake news being shared around the site. In an apparent abdication of responsibility, Facebook’s head of global policy and communication Nick Clegg said the site won’t censor content from politicians at all during the 2020 presidential election.

That means instead of tackling potential rule-breaking like hate-speech, Facebook will keep the posts up as “protected newsworthy speech.”

Facebook won’t censor content from politicians even if it violates Facebook policies

In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential elections, the Zuckerberg production is trying to make itself as impartial as possible, given the role the site had in influencing the 2016 elections. Of course, Facebook’s definition of “impartiality” is different to everyone else’s, and appears to mean “we’re not able to fact-check anything on our site, so we’re not going to bother.” Thanks, Facebook…

• Facebook doesn’t see itself as the “referee of political debates” or supposed to be preventing a “politician’s speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny.”
• The ruling is supposed to stop false news distorting voting decisions before the 2020 elections. If anything, the hands-off approach will likely have the opposite effect
• This is a similar policy to that of Twitter, although Facebook hasn’t said that it will do anything to limit the reach of rule-breaking content

The kicker? This policy also extends to ads paid for by politicians, because we all know they never lie in those, right? I’d avoid the social giant for the next year, it’s gonna get ugly.

What do you think? Surprised by the news? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.