Facebook will not tolerate hate speech ethics to anyone, especially politicians. The giant social media outlet has announced on Friday the landmark policy on the much-awaited issue, even though it has yet to announce its plans regarding the former president of the United States Donald Trump’s suspended account.
Social Media has given us the power to present our point of view to the world. It has helped represent democracy by helping individuals experience freedom of speech. But though social media has helped us to prevail, it is quite often to see it being used to present hate speech.
Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram have their individual hate speech rule which cannot be violated. Incase of violation they can easily report, or in circumstances involving racist, homophobic or sexist hate speech, the accounts get disabled all together.
Up till recently politicians were being given a free pass, especially in times of political campaigns, to present views of any sort, despite presenting hate or bias against a group of individuals or an entity. Facebook announced that it will no longer give politicians the right to break away from the company’s policies regarding criticism.
This change in the policy came as a result of suspending and banning former US President Donald Trump’s account back in January for his posts inciting violent views regarding the Capitol and the Muslim community throughout his presidency. Trump is also responsible for flooding the social media regarding claims of fraud in the presidential election of 2020.
Influential personalities like Donald Trump (2020) and Imran Khan in (2018) had built an immensely strong following of social media which led them to succeed in their respective elections. In case of Trump, due to his ban from Facebook and other platforms like Youtube, twitter etc he has lost a vast number of following due to his mis presence on social media
Facebook is also giving thought to the concept of newsworthiness, as news of any sort, be it fake or real could be posted on these platforms leading to misunderstandings or worse be propaganda inducing.