Facebook Chief Executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has disclosed that the social media would review its policies.
While disclosing this on Friday June 5, 2020, Zuckerberg said the policies prevented Facebook from moderating President Trump’s controversial messages that seemed to encourage violence against peaceful protesters who are demanding justice for George Floyd and end to police brutality and racism.
“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,” Zuckerberg said.
The decision to review the policies was made in an attempt to quell the anger of some of the employees in the company some of whom had quit the company over Facebook stand not to remove Mr. Trump’s posts that appeared to incite violence against peaceful protesters in the US who are protesting against police racism after the killing of George Floyd.
For instance, a software engineer, Timothy Aveni, who resigned from the company, wrote on his Facebook in response to Facebook reactions to Mr. Trump’s post,
“will keep moving the goalposts every time Trump escalates, finding excuse after excuse not to act on increasingly dangerous rhetoric.”
Zuckerberg also emphasized that reviewing the policies deserved special considerations given the US history.
Speaking about this, he said,”The policy review would include excessive use of police or state force. Given the sensitive history in the US, this deserves special consideration.”
He also said that he was ready to explore how policies are made in the company and would look into ways of advancing racial justice and voter engagement.
He, however, cautioned that the changes expected might not cover all concerned issues at the moment.
“While we are looking at all of these areas, we may not come up with changes we want to make in all of them,” he cautioned.
Also addressed in the letter is the issue of minorities not being adequately represented in the internal structure of the company over which employees have logged several complaints.
Zuckerberg added that, “We’re going to review whether we need to change anything structurally to make sure the right groups and voices are at the table.”
While addressing voting issue, Zuckerberg said, “I have confidence in the election integrity efforts we’ve implemented since 2016.”
“But there’s a good chance that there will be unprecedented fear and confusion around going to the polls in November, and some will likely try to capitalize on that confusion,” he added.
