- Mark Zuckerberg has stepped in to ease Facebook’s ban on Alex Jones in 2019, BuzzFeed reports.
- The ban would be supposed to support posts that Jones supports, but Zuckerberg has vetoed this part of it, sources said.
- Current and former employees said the company was deliberately indulgent with right-wing figures.
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According to the new BuzzFeed report, Facebook’s ban on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was less stringent than employees wanted it to be.
Facebook announced in May 2019 that it was banning a group of right-wing conspiracy theorists, including Jones. Sources told BuzzFeed that Facebook’s strategic response team recommends not only banning Jones himself, but also removing any content that praised or supported his ideas.
But once this recommendation was reached to Zuckerberg, he decided on a less comprehensive ban, which effectively deviated from the company’s policy, the sources said.
“Zuckerberg basically decided he did not want to use this policy against Jones because he did not personally think he was a hater,” a former Facebook employee told BuzzFeed.
Jones promoted a number of conspiracy theories, including that 9/11 was a false flag operation orchestrated by the government. He also said the shooting on Sandy Hook was a ‘joke’ and that the children killed were actors. The Washington Post reported on Saturday that Jones was among a group of right-wing figures being investigated by the FBI and the Department of Justice for possible links to the January 6 riot on the Capitol.
Employees who spent time drafting Facebook’s policy on hate speech and misinformation found Zuckerberg’s intervention frustrating, BuzzFeed reports.
“It was the first time I had to create a new policy category to fit in with what Zuckerberg wanted. It’s a bit demoralizing when we put a policy in place and went through strict cycles. Like what is it for? A former Facebook policy worker said.
Facebook did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on the report, but a company spokesman told BuzzFeed that “Mark has called for a more nuanced policy and enforcement strategy” over the Jones decision.
Alex Jones, the founder of the right-wing media group Infowars, addresses a crowd of pro-Trump protesters after storming the grounds of the Capitol building in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021.
Jon Cherry / Getty Images
Current and former employees said Zuckerberg’s decision sets the tone for Facebook’s approach to moderating right-wing personalities. Broadly speaking, the BuzzFeed report outlined detailed complaints from current and former employees that Facebook allowed right-wing figures to disregard its content moderation policy for fear it would target the company with accusations of anti-conservative prejudice.
The report spoke in particular about internal concerns that Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president of global public policy, had an extraordinary impact on policy decisions, and dominated the company’s experts’ warnings about spreading hateful and incorrect information on Facebook .
This is not the first time that employees’ concerns about Kaplan have surfaced. At a company meeting in June, the details of which were obtained by the Verge, a question posed by employees read: “Many people feel that Joel Kaplan has too much power over our decisions. Can we answer him a question and answer? get to know more about his role, influence and beliefs? ‘
Kaplan, who was an adviser to President George W. Bush, also provoked an internal setback from the company when he appeared at the 2018 sexual misconduct trial in Brett Kavanaugh.