Zuckerberg once wanted to sanction Trump. Then Facebook wrote rules that accommodated him.
Starting as early as 2015, Facebook executives started crafting exceptions for the then-candidate that transformed the world’s information battlefield for years to come.
To Facebook’s executives in Washington, the post didn’t appear to violate its policies, which allows leaders to post about government use of force if the message is intended to warn the public — but it came right up to the line. The deputies had already contacted the White House earlier in the day with an urgent plea to tweak the language of the post or simply delete it, the people said.
Eventually, Trump posted again, saying his comments were supposed to be a warning after all. Zuckerberg then went online to explain his rationale for keeping the post up, noting that Trump’s subsequent explanation helped him make his decision.
The frenzied push-pull was just the latest incident in a five-year struggle by Facebook to accommodate the boundary-busting ways of Trump. The president has not changed his rhetoric since he was a candidate, but the company has continually altered its policies and its products in ways certain to outlast his presidency.
Facebook has constrained its efforts against false and misleading news, adopted a policy explicitly allowing politicians to lie, and even altered its news feed algorithm to neutralize claims that it was biased against conservative publishers, according to more than a dozen former and current employees and previously unreported documents obtained by The Washington Post. One of the documents shows it began as far back as 2015, when as a candidate Trump posted a video calling for a ban of Muslims entering the United States. Facebook’s executives declined to remove it, setting in motion an exception for political discourse.
The concessions to Trump have led to a transformation of the world’s information battlefield. They paved the way for a growing list of digitally savvy politicians to repeatedly push out misinformation and incendiary political language to billions of people. It has complicated the public understanding of major events such as the pandemic and the protest movement, as well as contributed to polarization.
Advertiser Exodus Snowballs as Facebook Struggles to Ease Concerns
The social network has tried striking a more conciliatory tone with its advertisers, who object to its handling of hate speech.
NY TIMESLast Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, attended a virtual meeting with some of the company’s top advertising partners. The brands and agencies, which had started criticizing the social network for its willingness to keep hate speech unaltered and accessible on its site, were pressing for change.
According to five people with knowledge of the discussion, Mr. Zuckerberg’s message to advertisers was clear: We won’t back down.
But over the past week, Facebook’s attitude has changed. Marketing giants like Unilever, Coca-Cola and Pfizer announced that they were pausing their Facebook advertising. That outcry has grown, hitting the company’s wallet.
To contain the damage, Facebook began holding daily calls and sending emails to advertisers to soothe them, advertising executives said. Nick Clegg, the company’s communications chief, made a series of media appearances stressing that Facebook was doing its best to tamp down hate speech. On Monday, Facebook also agreed to an audit by the Media Rating Council over its approach to hate speech.
Yet even as Facebook has labored to stanch the ad exodus, it is having little effect. Executives at ad agencies said that more of their clients were weighing whether to join the boycott, which now numbers more than 300 advertisers and is expected to grow. Pressure on top advertisers is coming from politicians, supermodels, actors and even Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, they said. Internally, some Facebook employees said they were also using the boycott to push for change.
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| Mark Makela for The New York Times |
“Other companies are seeing this moment, and are stepping up proactively,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, citing recent efforts from Reddit, YouTube and Twitch taking down posts and content that promote hate speech across their sites. “If they can do it, and all of Facebook’s advertisers are asking them to do it, it doesn’t seem that hard to do.”
The push from advertisers has led Facebook’s business to a precarious point. While the social network has struggled with issues such as election interference and privacy in recent years, its juggernaut digital ads business has always powered forward. The Silicon Valley company has never faced a public backlash of this magnitude from its advertisers, whose spending accounts for more than 98 percent of its annual $70.7 billion in revenue.
The ad boycott may ultimately deliver more of a hit to Facebook’s reputation than to its bottom line. The top 100 advertisers on Facebook spent $4.2 billion on ads last year, or roughly 6 percent of the company’s total ad revenue, according to data cited in an investor note from Stifel. More than 70 percent of Facebook’s ad revenue comes from small businesses.
Yet the big-name brands that have pulled back are recognizable and may create a trickle-down effect, analysts said. “There’s a greater sensitivity to where brands are investing and what those platforms stand for than ever before,” said Harry Kargman, the chief executive of the mobile advertising company Kargo Global. “They’re effectively voting with their pocketbooks.”
Advertisers began taking action against Facebook’s handling of hate speech about two weeks ago while facing pressure from the Anti-Defamation League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Color of Change and other civil rights groups. On June 19, the North Face and REI were among the first brands to join a boycott.
High-profile allies quickly joined in. Roughly 10 days ago, representatives for Prince Harry and Meghan reached out to the head of the Anti-Defamation League to ask how they could support the movement, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. The couple called C.E.O.s at some of Facebook’s biggest ad buyers and implored them to stop their ad purchases, they said.
High-profile allies quickly joined in. Roughly 10 days ago, representatives for Prince Harry and Meghan reached out to the head of the Anti-Defamation League to ask how they could support the movement, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. The couple called C.E.O.s at some of Facebook’s biggest ad buyers and implored them to stop their ad purchases, they said.