Facebook gave politicians 13 exemptions to its content-moderation rules over a one-year period because their offending posts were determined to be newsworthy, the company revealed Thursday in a series of quarterly reports on its moderation practices.
The company also said it had applied the newsworthiness exception to 55 other cases between June 2021 and June 2022.
The disclosures offer new detailsabout the company’s treatment of politicians who violate its rules, an issue that was brought to the fore by the platform’s suspension of former president Donald Trump’s account after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. For years, Facebook has been criticized for giving too much deference to politicians such as Trump who broke the platform’s rules, while conservatives have said Facebook’s suspension of Trump was overly punitive of a world leader.
Last fall, the company’s Oversight Board criticized Facebook for failing to be transparent about the exemptions it grants high-profile users who break the platform’s rules. The board’s criticism came after a Wall Street Journal report detailed the platform’s “cross check” program, which shields selected users from the company’s regular content-moderation system, though the newsworthy exemption operates separately.
Facebook said that it was releasing the data in response to the Oversight Board’s criticism and that it would update the numbers in future reports.
Under its current rules, Facebook may determine a post is newsworthy — and therefore exempt from its community standards — if it raises awareness of an imminent threat to public health or safety or adds to a public debate in politics.
Facebook spokeswoman Jen Ridings confirmed none of the 13 politicians granted exemptions are American. Of the 55 other exemptions, one was a post from the United States, Ridings said. The company provided few other details about the exempted posts, but on its website, it gave three examples.