By Kaswar Klasra
Islamabad: Facebook on Thursday removed advertisements run by President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign arguing it was against its policy against organized hate.
It was not an ordinary decision to remove theses adds. Mark Zuckerberg has been under immense pressure to act against adds for Trump’s re-election’s campaign. Apparently, Mark offered resistance to the calls by the company employees and masses.
However, weeks long powerful, yet well organized, peaceful and sophisticated protests at Facebook headquarter by Facebook’s employees, seem to have gently pressurized Mark Zuckerberg to change his stance finally agreeing to remove the adds.
According to CNN, Facebook (FB) on Thursday said it had take action against ads run by President Trump’s re-election campaign for breaching its policies on hate. The ads, which attacked what the Trump campaign described as “Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups,” featured an upside-down triangle.
The Anti-Defamation League said Thursday the triangle “is practically identical to that used by the Nazi regime to classify political prisoners in concentration camps.”
“We removed these posts and ads for violating our policy against organized hate. Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol,” Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesperson, told CNN Business.
A number of Facebook employees publicly criticized CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to not take down Donald Trump’s racially charged post suggesting Minneapolis rioters would be shot at.
Earlier this month, Zuckerberg, in a post, on Facebook, had said while Trump’s message included a “troubling historical reference” — specifically, the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” — and while Zuckerberg personally disagreed with the president’s inflammatory rhetoric, Facebook decided to not remove it to “enable as much expression as possible.”
Following his resistance and explanation which the employees refused to accept, Facebook employees, in a rare move, took to Twitter to voice disagreement with Zuckerberg, with some lauding Twitter’s decision to add a warning label in front of Trump’s tweet because it broke Twitter rules against glorifying violence. The controversy comes as U.S. cities nationwide were engulfed by ongoing civil unrest sparked by the murder of George Floyd, a black man killed by Minneapolis police officers last month which sparked protests across the USA.
Earlier this month, hundreds of Facebook employees had shown unprecedented levels of dissent after the company decided to take no action on an incendiary post from President Trump. The post, which also appeared on Twitter, referred to the ongoing US protests against racism and police brutality by saying, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
“While Twitter flagged Trump’s post for “glorifying violence,” Facebook decided to do nothing; the company said that Trump’s post was discussing the use of state force and therefore didn’t violate its policies. The decision has divided Facebook, with hundreds of employees protesting, several early employees penning an open letter imploring the company to reverse the decision, and at least two Facebook employees resigning in protest over the matter earlier this week, “ Vox reported on June 5, 2020.
“Now, Recode has learned that another employee has also resigned in protest. The employee posted a resignation note on a group in Facebook’s internal “Workplace” app on Thursday. This note — a copy of which was obtained by Recode — is addressed to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and makes an argument that Facebook is hurting black people inside and outside the company with its hands-off approach to Trump’s inflammatory posts,” It added.
“I’m deeply ashamed of working in a company that gives free rein to a racist post because it is by a politician,” wrote the employee, who is not black but identifies as a person of color. Recode has redacted their name.
“Black employees from your own company have asked you to respond meaningfully, but you remain alternately defensive and evasive … You’ve disappointed us all — the few people of color in your company — and your refusal to speak out against violence against Black people is chilling,” Vox, reported.
In sharp contrast, Facebook removed “More Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior From Iran and Russia” in without hesitation , last year in October 2019.
“we removed four separate networks of accounts, Pages and Groups for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram. Three of them originated in Iran and one in Russia, and they targeted a number of different regions of the world: the US, North Africa and Latin America. All of these operations created networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing. We have shared information about our findings with law enforcement, policymakers and industry partners,” Facebook announced on October 21, 2019.
“We’re constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people. We’re taking down these Pages, Groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted. In each of these cases, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action. We are making progress rooting out this abuse, but as we’ve said before, it’s an ongoing challenge.
We’re committed to continually improving to stay ahead. That means building better technology, hiring more people and working closer with law enforcement, security experts and other companies,” Facebook authorities had said last year.
Sources told Islamabad Telegraph,
That Facebook employees as well as the Americans were expecting same sort of action by Marck Zuckerberg in Trump’s advertisement case which , unfortunately, didn’t happen. The double standards forced the employees to revolt ultimately making Zuckerberg bow on knees before company employees.
Zuckerberg bows on knee: Orders removal of ads for Trump’s re-election campaign
