Facebook ‘gives in to pitchfork mob’ with danger labels
Zuckerberg accused of threat to free speech in bid to appease protests that have cost him £6bn
FACEBOOK founder Mark Zuckerberg was last night accused by free speech groups of bowing to pressure from a ‘woke pitchfork mob’ after he introduced new guidelines that campaigners fear will have a chilling effect on public debate.
Mr Zuckerberg announced that ‘problematic’ Facebook posts will soon be slapped with a warning label even if they do not breach the social media giant’s rules, after an aggressive boycott campaign by US civil rights activists and Black Lives Matter supporters wiped an astonishing £45billion off the company’s balance sheet.
More than 100 companies, including Coca-Cola and Unilever, pulled millions of pounds worth of adverts from Facebook in recent days in response to the Stop Hate For Profit campaign, which accused the social media site of allowing ‘racist, violent and verifiably false content to run rampant on its platform’.
Civil rights activists claimed last night that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had joined the boycott.
After Facebook’s shares nosedived, wiping almost
£6billion off his personal fortune, Mr Zuckerberg hurriedly announced on Friday night that he was introducing new policies ahead of the US elections to ‘connect people with authoritative information about voting, crack down on voter suppression, and fight hate speech.’
But, controversially, he said the company would label some posts from politicians as being ‘problematic’ – even if they do not breach Facebook’s hate speech rules.
He said: ‘We’ll allow people to share this content to condemn it, just like we do with other problematic content, because this is an important part of how we discuss what’s acceptable in our society – but we’ll add a prompt to tell people that the content they’re sharing may violate our policies.’ Mr Zuckerberg also said he had ‘invested heavily’ in artificial intelligence computer systems to monitor its 1.7billion users around the globe, including 37 million in the UK.
The Mail on Sunday understands that the firm will in addition hire 10,000 moderators on top of the 35,000 already employed to root out offending posts.
The policy echoes measures introduced by Twitter which issued warnings on tweets by Donald Trump, sparking a row with the White House.
Free speech campaigners said they fear Facebook’s new policy panders to far-Left ‘woke’ activists who are intent on suppressing conservative views and opinions.
Tory MP Philip Davies said: ‘We cannot allow a situation where the self-appointed politically correct brigade go round deciding which legitimate free speech is acceptable and unacceptable.’
Toby Young, of the Free Speech Union, said: ‘This isn’t about stopping “hate speech” which is already banned on Facebook.
‘It’s about de-legitimising anyone who challenges the new orthodoxy that’s been established in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.
‘From now on, if you post something on Facebook saying Winston Churchill wasn’t racist, or J. K. Rowling isn’t a bigot, or the BBC shouldn’t have censored Fawlty Towers, it will either be removed or have a health warning attached to it.
‘Zuckerberg has capitulated to a woke pitchfork mob.’
And Andrew Allison, of the Freedom Association pressure group, said: ‘Facebook may be concerned that advertisers are removing ads, but it has to decide if it is a platform for free speech or not.’