In Reversal, New Facebook Content Moderation Policy Will Treat Politicians the Same as All Users

Mark Zuckerberg (Saul Loeb/Getty Images)

Facebook has announced that under its updated content moderation policy, politicians will no longer be exempt from the platform’s Community Standards that apply to all other users.

Under the new Facebook policy, anyone who violates the Community Standards – which limit a variety of content ranging from harassment and exploitation to incitement of violence and fake news – may face suspension from the platform for up to two years for “severe violations” that create a risk to public safety, with the potential for additional sanction after that time, depending on the user’s actions upon returning to Facebook.

Politicians have generally been exempt from the platform’s fact-checking program, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously taken a hard line against fact-checking political speech.

The policy change was included in a Friday statement from Facebook’s VP of global affairs Nick Clegg, explaining Facebook’s decision to uphold its ban on former President Donald Trump from the platform for two years.

“[W]hen we assess content for newsworthiness, we will not treat content posted by politicians any differently from content posted by anyone else,” Clegg said in the statement. “Instead, we will simply apply our newsworthiness balancing test in the same way to all content, measuring whether the public interest value of the content outweighs the potential risk of harm by leaving it up.”

Facebook also provided more information about its “newsworthiness allowance,” which essentially allows Facebook to keep content that would normally violate content standards on the platform if it is “newsworthy or important to the public interest.”

Facebook also shared its “strike system,” which explains “what actions our systems will take if they violate our policies.”

Facebook used Trump’s “exceptional” case to illustrate how its “heightened penalties for public figures during times of civil unrest and ongoing violence” will apply.

“We are today announcing new enforcement protocols to be applied in exceptional cases such as this, and we are confirming the time-bound penalty consistent with those protocols which we are applying to Mr. Trump’s accounts,” Facebook said in a statement. “Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr. Trump’s suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols.”

At the end of the two-year suspension, Facebook will make a determination of whether the “risk to public safety has receded … If we determine that there is still a serious risk to public safety, we will extend the restriction for a set period of time and continue to re-evaluate until that risk has receded.”

Even after the suspension is lifted, users – including Trump – will face “a strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions that will be triggered” if violations continue, including a possible permanent ban.

Trump was first banned from Facebook and Instagram in January, shortly after the deadly insurrection by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol. Facebook’s Oversight Board upheld the ban in early May.

According to Facebook, the Oversight Board “criticized the open-ended nature of the suspension,” and instructed Facebook to “review the decision and respond in a way that is clear and proportionate, and made a number of recommendations on how to improve our policies and processes.”

In Friday’s statement, Facebook also renewed its request for legislation and regulation relating to content moderation.

“In the absence of frameworks agreed upon by democratically accountable lawmakers, the board’s model of independent and thoughtful deliberation is a strong one that ensures important decisions are made in as transparent and judicious a manner as possible,” Clegg’s statement said. “The Oversight Board is not a replacement for regulation, and we continue to call for thoughtful regulation in this space.”

Facebook also stated an already-obvious fact: that the penalty only applied to Facebook and Instagram, and that “Mr. Trump is and will remain free to express himself publicly via other means.”