It has been revealed that Facebook employees recently campaigned to remove a number of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s posts.
The employees argued that the posts went against Facebook’s guidelines, and qualified as hate speech.
This story, broken by the Wall Street Journal, included posts calling for a nationwide ban on all Muslims. These posts incited fury within the Facebook community, and particularly upset the Muslim employees of Facebook.
Fear
Facebook’s head of global policy management, Monika Bickert, made the decision to keep the posts on Donald Trump’s wall as she feared the potential outcomes of censoring a presidential candidate.
The issue went all the way up to Facebook’s Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who reviewed the complaint. After doing so, Zuckerberg also made the decision to leave the post live.
Non-Partisan
Zuckerberg has been trying to make Facebook a non-partisan social media platform. However, he defended Facebook director Peter Thiel’s $1.25 million donation to the Republican nominee.
The site also decided to loosen their restrictions on political speech. On Friday, Facebook’s policy team wrote the following:
“In the weeks ahead, we’re going to begin allowing more items that people find newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest—even if they might otherwise violate our standards.”
Internal
Zuckerberg continued to receive complaints after his decision, according to a source at the Wall Street Journal. These were made exclusively about Trump’s violent rhetoric.
The multi-billion dollar company responded by ending all questions and stating that the issue had already been resolved.
Featured image from Greg Nash/The Hill.