Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently took to his platform to announce that it will readdress its policies after facing backlash over posts by President Trump.
In a long Facebook post, Zuckerberg said that he acknowledges the pain Facebook users have expressed after the company did not take any action after a Trump post that threatened protestors with violence.
Zuckerberg said that the company will revisit its policies against "threats of state use of force" as well as the present standard of either removing a post or leaving them up even if they are capable of sparking violence.
“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,” said the Facebook chief.
He also put forward more possible follow-up actions like making its decision-making process for content more clear to users, broadening the groups that take part in those decisions, and making new products that promote racial justice. However, Zuckerberg's post did not include any solid commitments.
“I want to be clear that while we are looking at all of these areas, we may not come up with changes we want to make in all of them,” he added.
Facebook has been facing extreme scrutiny for Trump's post that read "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." Democrats have called Facebook's inaction as "embarrassing" and "cowardly," while Republicans have praised Facebook for not restricting free speech.
This time even Facebook's employees who held back before have started criticizing Zuckerberg over his high-profile decision and also started skipping work to join the protest.
Zuckerberg also mentioned that he personally was negative about the president's "inflammatory rhetoric", and that Facebook left the post because of Facebook's dedication to empowering free speech and Trump's message could potentially inform users about government's use of force.
