JUST IN: Some Of Trump’s Facebook Posts Were So Racist, Facebook Employees Wanted Them Removed

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.

Kay Smythe is a freelance writer, social geographer, and senior writer at Anthony Gilardi's HIPPO LIFE. She was first published by Guardian Travel in the mid-2000s, which earned her the editorship at her college newspaper in 2010. From there, Smythe was opinion and news editor with The Tab, whilst maintaining a blog with Huffington Post. Her works featured interviews with Oscar and Emmy nominated actors. In early 2016, Smythe was awarded an O1 VISA. She lives and works in Venice, California, and loves it.