Facebook has been changing policies regarding its content aggressively. This is because the company wants to be identified as a platform that treats everyone’s content respectfully and in the same manner. There will be no difference in norms for regulating the content of an average person and a politician.
The company received a lot of flak because of the different way it treated the content that came from the government officials and the content that came from a normal citizen. But not anymore; Facebook is going overboard with its policies and will look to regulate all the content in the same manner and with the same policies regardless of whose content it is.
Facebook’s New Approach Towards Content
For the unaware, Facebook had suspended Donald Trump from its platform back in January. However, the company has now decided to extend the suspension until 2023 at least. The suspension might be extended even further to an indefinite period. One of the notable things here is that this is the first time that Facebook has suspended an account of such a powerful person.
Now, if a politician engages in harmful/hateful speech, his/her account and content will be under the purview of the same regulations that the company uses for normal citizens. These changes will be coming to India as well.
This is a much-needed change that Facebook had to bring in, given the power of influence its platform holds. People go berserk if a politician makes a hateful comment or speech on the platform. Facebook had to come up with such a policy to keep people in the country and its platform safe from being exposed to propaganda and agendas that politicians spread.
The new content policy of Facebook might not sit well with the Indian government officials. This is because a lot of people in high power inside the government use Facebook to say whatever they feel like. If their account is also suspended, they will not look at Facebook in a very light manner.
This is a strong, bold, brave, and much-needed decision from Facebook. The company will decide what posts need to stay on the platform and what doesn’t on the basis of their value to the users. If the company finds that the content is hateful and harmful, it will remove it.
