An external civil rights audit published Wednesday by Facebook faults the company for not cracking down on President Trump and calls for more aggressive enforcement against him.
Former American Civil Liberties Union legislative director Laura W. Murphy led the audit, which Facebook made public amid anti-Facebook boycotts gaining attention.
“The auditors are deeply concerned that Facebook’s recent decisions on posts by President Trump indicate a tremendous setback for all of the policies that attempt to ban voter suppression on Facebook,” the auditors wrote in their report. “From the auditors’ perspective, allowing the Trump posts to remain establishes a terrible precedent that may lead other politicians and non-politicians to spread false information about legal voting methods, which would effectively allow the platform to be weaponized to suppress voting.”
The auditors specifically listed Facebook posts from Mr. Trump in May as objectionable and containing false information. In response, the auditors call for “stronger interpretation” of Facebook’s existing policies that would prohibit the president from publishing content about elections that the auditors deemed false.
Facebook has not taken any such action but announced new policies in late June that will change its approach to content about elections and voting.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook that his company will begin labeling politicians’ speech that violates its policies, start new efforts to proactively take down false content in the final hours before an election, and prohibit more content from appearing in ads.
“To clarify one point: there is no newsworthiness exemption to content that incites violence or suppresses voting,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote in June. “Even if a politician or government official says it, if we determine that content may lead to violence or deprive people of their right to vote, we will take that content down. Similarly, there are no exceptions for politicians in any of the policies I’m announcing here today.”
In the final three days before an election, Mr. Zuckerberg wrote, Facebook’s “Election Operations Center” will have responsibility for moving quickly to remove content that Facebook determines to include false claims about elections to better prevent voter suppression.
The company this month started a new voter registration push with a goal of signing up 4 million voters. Facebook Vice President Nick Clegg, who formerly served as deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom and leader of the Liberal Democrats, called it the “largest voter information campaign in U.S. history.”
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.