After the internal sling, the time has come for Mark Zuckerberg to give pledges. Friday evening, after an extremely tense week in the American social network, the Facebook boss announced to his angry employees a series of projects that could lead to a review of the moderation policy of the platform. The idea is to return to the various points of the internal regulations which led Mark Zuckerberg to leave intact controversial messages from President Donald Trump, while Twitter had moderated them. The first two contained false information about postal voting. The third suggested the use of force against looters operating on the margins of protests against racism and police violence."I recognize that many of you were upset, disappointed or hurt by the decision I made last week," writes Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook's regulations allow states to threaten with the use of force - but it does not allow calls to violence that pose immediate risks to people. "We will examine whether we should not amend this rule on two specific situations , " writes the boss of Facebook. “The first is on the excessive use of force. Given the sensitive history of the United States, this requires special attention. ” The second concerns countries that are already theaters of unrest or conflict.
Facebook teams will also review the rules to ensure that the platform does not broadcast speeches intended to dissuade American voters from voting. “Regarding postal voting, where to draw the line between a legitimate debate on this voting method, and attempts to mislead voters on where, when and how to vote? If a newspaper publishes articles explaining that going to polling stations is dangerous with the Covid-19 pandemic, how do we determine if it is health information or manipulation to divert readers from ballot boxes? " , continues Mark Zuckerberg.
Promise of transparency
The Facebook boss also promises to examine whether the platform can abandon its binary moderation policy on content calling for violence, which is either deleted or left intact. "I am afraid that this will lead us to editorialize content that we do not like even if it does not violate our regulations," said Mark Zuckerberg, who however said he was ready to listen to the opposite arguments.
Another promise: make the internal decision-making process more transparent, and ensure that the right people are included in the discussions. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg explained to his employees that he had received a report from the team managing Facebook's moderation policy after the publication of Donald Trump's message on the protests. This document explored possible solutions for handling this message, with an order of preference. Mark Zuckerberg also sought outside advice, before deciding with a small group of senior social network leaders. An employee noted that only one person in this group was black, and that the Integrity team, which manages representation matters, had not been invited to the discussions.
The Facebook boss underlines: all these audits will not necessarily lead to reforms. These announcements can therefore perfectly be a means of calming rebellious employees, without anything fundamentally changing. Only one point of Mark Zuckerberg's message is concrete: Facebook is going to develop an information center on the presidential 2020, on the model of that set up for the pandemic of Covid-19. "We want everyone to have access to fair and authoritative information about this election," he wrote. This will likely be civic information on how to register on the electoral rolls, how to vote on D-Day, and what are the days and hours when polling stations are open.