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Facebook disputes claims that it provides more editorial space to President Trump and his campaign ahead of the 2020 election as part of its new federal regulatory avoidance agreement.
The newest fight is part of a larger battle that Facebook is battling with critics who say it has evidence that it enforces different rules for politicians and VIPs than the regular banners that use their platform. Answers to how Facebook’s censorship regime developed prior to the then-banning of President Trump earlier this year could be critical to regulatory and policy decisions debated by federal lawmakers, and could impact Mr Trump’s lawsuit against Facebook for his ban.
Author Max Chafkin claims that Mr. Trump’s fingerprints were in Facebook’s decision not to verify political speech before the 2020 election. Mr. Trump, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Jared Kushner – Mr. Trump’s son-in-law – and billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel met privately at the White House in 2019 and came up with a plan. Contrarian” is a book about Mr. Thiel.
“The details of the discussion were confidential – but . . . Thiel later told a confidant that Zuckerberg had come to an agreement with Kushner during the meal,” Mr. Chafkin wrote for the New York Magazine website. “Facebook has promised to continue to avoid fact-checking political speech – thus allowing the Trump campaign to demand whatever it wants. If the company delivers on that promise, the Trump administration will drop any heavy-handed regulation.”
Facebook considers the claim nonsense.
“The policy was announced before this dinner took place,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said on Twitter.
Mr Stone said the policy evolved a year before that dinner, and cited a September 2019 Facebook post and a 2018 report in the Washington Post as evidence that Mr Zuckerberg had not secretly planned a meal with Mr Trump. .
When Facebook decided to treat political speech differently from other forms of online speech, the company’s critics have already taken action on how it treats various users differently.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook has been “whitelisted” — it exempts certain people from online enforcement actions. An internal review of Facebook’s whitelisting behavior found it untenable, according to the Journal, despite Facebook’s use of the app to handle prominent accounts.
Facebook says critics fundamentally misunderstand its rules.
Dan Gainor, vice president of the Conservative Center for Media Research, has criticized Facebook’s whitelisting practices but doesn’t believe the social media giant is alone.
“As for whitelisting, it’s clear they’re doing it on an official basis. [b]All major social media companies treat some posters differently than others,” Mr. Gainor said in a message. “It’s terrible, inconsistent and not even transparent. I just don’t think Facebook is the only one that gives special treatment to certain users.”
However, Facebook’s rules are under more scrutiny than other tech platforms because of how legislators and regulators target their platform. For example, Illinois Democrat Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi wrote to Mr. Zuckerberg on Monday to request all documents related to suspected trafficking using his Facebook and Instagram accounts.
While CEOs of tech companies routinely receive letters from disgruntled lawmakers, Mr. Krishnamoorthi leads a subcommittee on economic and consumer policy in the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which has significant say over regulations for social media companies.
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