Facebook has historically said it would not fact-check or remove posts from world leaders.
Facebook confirmed Friday that politicians will no longer be exempt from its content rules, as The Verge earlier reported. Differently from content posted by anyone else,” Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, wrote in a press release. “Instead, we will simply apply our newsworthiness balancing test in the same way to all content, measuring whether the public interest value of the content outweighs the potential risk of harm by leaving it up.”
Facebook rolled out guidelines for penalty durations spanning from one month to two years for public figures “during times of civil unrest and ongoing violence.” Permanent removal is also on the table, and the company said if it decides to keep a post up based on newsworthiness, it will disclose that to the public.
Facebook also said it was suspending former President Donald Trump’s account for two years, starting from the original January 7 ban date.
