Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook has ‘changed rules for Trump since 2015 to allow his controversial posts to stay on the site’
FACEBOOK has continually changed its rules for Donald Trump to allow his controversial posts to stay put, reports say.
The social network reportedly amended its hate speech and misinformation policies before, during and after Trump's presidential inauguration.
In the bombshell report, The Washington Post cited a "push-pull" relationship between the President and CEO Mark Zuckerberg since 2015.
The publication noted that Trump has been consistent in his rhetoric but claimed Facebook tailored its policies and protocols for the President.
As a presidential candidate in 2015, Trump posted a controversial video supporting a Muslim ban in the United States, which provoked outrage.
Sources told The Post how Zuckerberg was initially open to taking against against Trump's post.
But Facebook's Senior Vice President of Global Public Policy Joel Kaplan – a former aide to President George W. Bush – persuaded him not to.
Insiders told the publication this situation forced the internal decisions until 2016.
That year, the company amended its policies politicians's "newsworthy" posts would enjoy certain exemptions from community guidelines.
As Trump ascended to the Oval Office, Facebook started pandering more to Washington DC, as per The Post.
Three years later, the platform announced that it it wouldn't be fact-checking politicians' posts in 2019.
Kaplan reportedly pushed for Facebook's algorithm to be more permissive towards right-wing content after being accused of punishing conservatives.
A dozen current and ex-Facebook employees spoke to The Post and the newspaper also cited previously unreported documents on the matter.
But a company spokesperson denied The Post's claims.
"The Washington Post’s insinuation that we developed policies intended to please the Trump administration is wrong," a Facebook representative told The Sun.
"While many Republicans think we should do one thing and many Democrats want us to do just the opposite, our job is to create one common set of rules that applies equally to everyone.
"We don’t believe Twitter, YouTube, Facebook or any technology company should determine what words people should or shouldn’t see from their elected leaders in a democracy.”
But Trump's social media has come under intense scrutiny and criticism in lights of coronavirus and the George Floyd protests.
The President declared he would deploy the National Guard to deal with thousands of demonstrators.
"When the looting starts, the shooting starts," he wrote on Facebook and Twitter.
While Twitter placed an alert under his tweet saying Trump broke their "glorifying violence" rules, Facebook left his status untouched.
Trump then issued an executive order, which stated that tech juggernauts had become an "editor[s] with a point of view."
After targeting companies like Facebook and Google, the President said he would love to shutter CEO Jack Dorsey's Twitter operations for good.
Trump also retweeted an article referencing Zuckerberg's statements that private companies shouldn't be "the arbiter of truth."
Later, on June 17, companies were urged to pull their ads from Facebook after being pressured by the Stop Hate For Profit campaign.
Coca Cola, Verizon, Starbucks, Unilever, Pepsi are some of the 160 firms boycotting Zuckerberg's online empire.
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Facebook has since announced that it will be incorporating new policies.
On June 26, Zuckerberg said people will be prevented from saying a race, ethnicity, nationality, caste, gender, sexual orientation, or immigration origin are a threat.
If a post breaks one of their guidelines, it will also be labeled as such, much like Twitter's protocol.
