Zuckerberg: Facebook will review policies after backlash over Trump posts

Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook will review its content policies after facing widespread backlash, including from its own employees, over the decision to leave up controversial posts from President Donald Trump. Facebook will look at improving content policies while also building products to advance racial justice, the CEO said in response to the protests in the United States. 

“I know many of you think we should have labeled the President’s posts in some way last week,” Zuckerberg said in a lengthy Facebook post, referring to his decision not to remove inflammatory content by President Trump containing the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”, which has racist origins and was censored by Twitter. “We’re going to review potential options for handling violating or partially-violating content aside from the binary leave-it-up or take-it-down decisions,” Zuckerberg’s statement continued. “Our current policy is that if content is actually inciting violence, then the right mitigation is to take that content down – not let people continue seeing it behind a flag. There is no exception to this policy for politicians or newsworthiness. I think this policy is principled and reasonable, but I also respect a lot of the people who think there may be better alternatives, so I want to make sure we hear all those ideas. I started meeting with the team yesterday and we’re continuing the discussion soon.”