Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has said that the company would be prepared to remove a Trump post which violated the company’s standards. Specifically, she stressed that if it went against their hate speech standards or gave false information about the coronavirus or the election, then it would come down.
Speaking on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, Sandberg was responding to a question about how Facebook will monitor Trump’s speech in the run up to the election in November. She discussed that Facebook have just opened a Voting Information Center, which Sandberg hopes will provide accurate information.
They have already started to moderate Trump’s posts on Facebook, however. Earlier this month they removed one of his posts which they said had a false claim, as he had said that children were ‘almost immune’ from Covid-19. The company also faced criticism in May when they refused to moderate or take down a Trump post where, in relation to the Black Lives Matter protests, he said ‘when the looting starts the shooting starts’.
Bias in the media
However, this seems to be a dangerous path for Facebook to be treading. As we discussed in Getting Trump, this is part of the bias being shown by the media. If they take Trump’s posts down, are they going to do the same for everyone else? We know that the mainstream media have a Democrat bias, and Mitchell’s question was in itself biased, as it was focused on how they were going to moderate Trump, not the election candidates.
Somehow, organizations such as Facebook have to be the arbiter of the truth. The alternative is that, if they persist in showing bias, this could become a problem. They could end up being subject to some kind of regulation. It is fine and good to have such standards. However, they have to be fairly applied to all, and allow for the freedom of speech which is essential to democracy.
Ultimately, Facebook needs to be fair to Trump.
Picture: Official portrait of President Donald J. Trump, Friday, October 6, 2017. (Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead)
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