Facebook's Zuckerberg promises a review of content
policies after backlash
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 [June 06, 2020] (Reuters)
- Facebook <FB.O> CEO Mark Zuckerberg on
Friday said he would consider changes to the policy that led the company
to leave up controversial posts by President Donald Trump during recent
demonstrations protesting the death of an unarmed black man while in
police custody, a partial concession to critics.
Zuckerberg did not promise specific policy changes in a Facebook post,
days after staff members walked off the job, some claiming he kept
finding new excuses not to challenge Trump.
"I know many of you think we should have labeled the President's posts
in some way last week," Zuckerberg wrote, referring to his decision not
to remove Trump's message containing the phrase "when the looting
starts, the shooting starts."
"We're going to review our policies allowing discussion and threats of
state use of force to see if there are any amendments we should adopt,"
he wrote. "We're going to review potential options for handling
violating or partially-violating content aside from the binary
leave-it-up or take-it-down decisions."
Zuckerberg said Facebook would be more transparent about its
decision-making on whether to take down posts, review policies on posts
that could cause voter suppression and would look to build software to
advance racial justice, led by important lieutenants.
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Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a House
Financial Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington,
U.S., October 23, 2019. REUTERS/Erin Scott
At a staff meeting earlier this week, employees questioned Zuckerberg's stance
on Trump's post.
Zuckerberg, who holds a controlling stake in Facebook, has maintained that while
he found Trump's comments "deeply offensive," they did not violate company
policy against incitements to violence.
Facebook's policy is either to take down a post or leave it up, without any
other options. Now, Zuckerberg said, other possibilities would be considered.
However, he added, "I worry that this approach has a risk of leading us to
editorialize on content we don't like even if it doesn't violate our policies."
(Reporting by Ayanti Bera in Bengaluru and Peter Henderson in Oakland; Editing
by Anil D'Silva and Leslie Adler)
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