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Facebook's refusal to fact-check or moderate politicians like President Trump is its biggest civil rights issue, according to a new internal audit (FB)

  • For the past several years, Facebook has refused to moderate speech from politicians — a policy that has been repeatedly tested by statements made by President Trump.
  • In a newly published civil rights audit, that policy is explicitly cited as a major issue. 
  • "If politicians are free to mislead people about official voting methods (by labeling ballots illegal or making other misleading statements that go unchecked, for example) and are allowed to use not-so-subtle dog whistles with impunity to incite violence against groups advocating for racial justice, this does not bode well for the hostile voting environment that can be facilitated by Facebook in the United States," the audit says.
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Facebook's refusal to fact-check what it deems "political speech" on its platform is the central criticism found in a lengthy new civil rights audit done with the cooperation of Facebook itself.

"We have grave concerns that the combination of the company's decision to exempt politicians from
fact-checking and the precedents set by its recent decisions on President Trump's posts, leaves the door open for
the platform to be used by other politicians to interfere with voting," the audit says.

"If politicians are free to mislead people about official voting methods (by labeling ballots illegal or making other misleading statements that go unchecked, for example) and are allowed to use not-so-subtle dog whistles with impunity to incite violence against groups advocating for racial justice, this does not bode well for the hostile voting environment that can be facilitated by Facebook in the United States."

Facebook's stance on political speech comes straight from CEO and cofounder Mark Zuckerberg.

In a wide-ranging speech at Georgetown University in October 2019, Zuckerberg made an argument for not moderating political speech on Facebook. 

"We don't do this to help politicians," he said, "but because we think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying. And if content is newsworthy, we also won't take it down even if it would otherwise conflict with many of our standards." He has repeatedly defended Facebook's position across the following months. 

That policy has been put to the test repeatedly by President Trump's posts. In one example from late May, Trump decried anti-racism protesters as "THUGS" and threatened violent retaliation.

"When the looting starts, the shooting starts," Trump said on Twitter and Facebook, a direct quote of a notoriously harsh Miami police chief who invoked the phrase against Black Americans during the race riots of the late 1960s. 

That message violated Facebook's Community Standards for conduct. Specifically, it violated Facebook's rules regarding "violence and criminal behavior," which state:

"While we understand that people commonly express disdain or disagreement by threatening or calling for violence in non-serious ways, we remove language that incites or facilitates serious violence. We remove content, disable accounts, and work with law enforcement when we believe there is a genuine risk of physical harm or direct threats to public safety. We also try to consider the language and context in order to distinguish casual statements from content that constitutes a credible threat to public or personal safety. In determining whether a threat is credible, we may also consider additional information like a person's public visibility and the risks to their physical safety."

Zuckerberg defended Facebook's decision to leave up Trump's post in a statement posted to his own Facebook page.

"Our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies," he wrote. "We looked very closely at the post that discussed the protests in Minnesota ... the National Guard references meant we read it as a warning about state action, and we think people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force."

The civil rights audit called Facebook's decision not to moderate Trump's posts, "a statement of values that protecting free expression is more important than other stated company values." 

Moreover, the audit repeatedly called on Facebook to change its policy of not moderating political speech and specifically called on the company to address the president's posts that violate its community standards.

"The Auditors strongly encourage Facebook to expeditiously revise or reinterpret its policies to ensure that they
prohibit content that labels official voting methods or ballots as illegal, fraudulent, or issued through unofficial
channels, and that Facebook prohibit content that misrepresents the steps or requirements for obtaining or submitting
a ballot," the audit says.

In a letter posted alongside the audit, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said the company "won't make every change [the auditors] call for," but will implement some of their suggestions. It's unclear which suggestions the company will adopt and which it won't, but Mark Zuckerberg recently indicated an openness to revisiting Facebook's political speech policy.

You can read the full Facebook civil rights audit report right here.

Got a tip? Contact Business Insider senior correspondent Ben Gilbert via email (bgilbert@businessinsider.com), or Twitter DM (@realbengilbert). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by email only, please.

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