Three Corners of a Triangle
Free Speech, Racism and Facebook in the age of Trump
May 29th, 2020 has marked the starting point of an ongoing debate for Facebook when the President of the United States Donald J. Trump made a post on his page. Mr. Trump, by referring to the protesters, shared that “…any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!” and soon after Twitter decided that the tweet of the President was used for the glorification of violence and instead of removing the tweet, they placed a warning note. This prompt action by Twitter has been positively commented by various media outlets and the public. In the meanwhile, all the eyes were looking at what would have been the decision of Facebook.
On May 30th , 2020, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made an announcement that “…although the post had a troubling historical reference, we decided to leave it up because the National Guard references meant we read it as a warning about state action, and we think people need to know if the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.” This statement was regarded as taking no action by many of the Facebook employees and in fact, they have a point: why does Facebook have to make this decision? Well, saying that “people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force” does not really make sense if the people are already protesting against the police violence and are very much aware that in America they can be shot by the police at any time. Many of the leaders from non-profit organizations have been in contact with Zuckerberg to address this issue, but Zuckerberg reflected his angle by saying that “our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause an imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies.” How could free speech be the justification for racist rhetoric? For preventing hate speech, content moderation is essential even in the case the post is shared by the President. Being ‘arbiters of truth’ may not be the mission of Facebook but helping to solve the polarization issue in our society by creating a world community does not seem like it either. The company has previously admitted being used to incite violence in Myanmar which contributed to the genocide of thousands of people a couple of years ago. This time many Facebook employees take their disagreement to another level by tweeting, making public statements, joining public discussions and organizing virtual walkouts. The backlash did not help Zuckerberg to change his opinion on the issue, but he continued to address the public discussions in his statements. Afterward the Color of Change president Rashad Robinson stated “Mark Zuckerberg thinks he can put a $10 million price tag on our silence. He’s wrong.” Moreover, the Facebook CEO pointed out they did not give $10 million for simply fixing the issues of African American people. In fact, I believe that the focus of the problem should not be who gives how much money for which intentions but being able to make profound changes in the ways that we use social media platforms. Years of design development and feature updates did not help us to create a community that appreciates differences of one another, instead, the spread of misinformation, hatred, closed communities, and filter bubbles have replaced humanitarian values. I believe it is too early for all of us to give up on this dream.
In another post that Zuckerberg shared on June 5th, 2020, he acknowledges many of the problems and proactively offers solutions. Facebook has promised four important steps to be taken to ensure the future of the company as many of the users and employees have been heavily criticizing the leadership team. Firstly, reviewing current Facebook policies to determine excessive use of police force, civil unrest and violent conflict. Secondly, the review of policies around voter suppression. Thirdly, reviewing the options on how to handle violating or partly violating content aside from current applications and lastly establishing a clearer and more transparent decision-making process. I believe these four points of Zuckerberg’s statement are promising and if the company can manage to make the right decisions it can prevent many of the future conflicts and divisions within our society.
