Facebook will label violating posts from public figures

SAN FRANCISCO — Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Friday that Facebook will remove posts that incite violence or attempt to suppress voting — even from political leaders — and that the company will affix labels on posts that violate its other policies as well.

The moves amount to major reversals amid rising public prespost sure, employee unrest and a burgeoning advertiser boycott over Facebook’s long-standing refusal to more aggressively address hate speech and other platform violations from politicians such as President Donald Trump.

The shifts are at least a partial retreat from the company’s traditional deference to speech it deems “newsworthy,” including Facebook’s decision earlier this month to not label or remove a by Trump that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Other companies, such as Twitter, which affixed a warning label on a similar post, have been more forceful at responding to policy violations, including from politicians.

“There are no exceptions for politicians in any of the policies that I’m announcing today,” Zuckerberg said in a town hall that was streamed live Friday.

Social media companies are under an especially bright spotlight this year in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election, facing pressure to control hate speech and misinformation on their sites — something that still haunts them from rampant disinformation that spread online during the 2016 campaign.

Facebook in particular has faced harsh criticism in recent weeks for its decision to leave up posts from the president that many advocates said clearly incited violence. Twitter, on the other hand, labeled tweets by the president that falsely said mail-in ballots would be fraudulent and that appeared to called for violence against protesters.

In that May post, President Trump referred to protesters as “THUGS” and wrote, “Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

The new policy is not retroactive.