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Facebook Backtracks, Says It Will Put Warnings on Public Figures’ Misleading Posts

Just last week, after Twitter slapped warnings on some of President Trump’s tweets, Zuckerberg said Facebook wouldn’t do the same.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg backtracked massively on Friday, announcing that the social-media platform would put warnings on misleading posts by public figures that are too newsworthy to remove. “We will start soon labeling some of the content we leave up because it is deemed newsworthy,” he said. The announcement’s timing is telling. Just last week, after Twitter had slapped warnings on some of President Trump’s misleading or violent tweets, Zuckerberg said Facebook wouldn’t do the same because companies shouldn’t be “the arbiter of truth.” But almost 100 companies, including big advertisers like Verizon and Unilever, have since announced they’d pull ad spend from Facebook due to the proliferation of hate speech and divisive content. Zuckerberg also announced Friday that Facebook would change its policies to prohibit hate speech in advertisements.