Zuckerberg accused of setting 'dangerous precedent' for allowing Trump's Facebook post

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is facing heat for the company’s inaction against US President Donald Trump’s post in which he threatened to shoot the looters. Civil rights leaders held a virtual meeting with Zuckerberg to discuss the company’s stance over Trump’s controversial post which was hidden by Twitter for “glorifying violence”.

Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; Sherrilyn Ifill, director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; and Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, said in a joint statement that Zuckerberg is setting a “very dangerous precedent”. The civil rights leaders said that they were “disappointed and stunned” by Zuckerberg’s “incomprehensible explanations” to let Trump’s post remain up on Facebook.

“He did not demonstrate understanding of historic or modern-day voter suppression and he refuses to acknowledge how Facebook is facilitating Trump's call for violence against protesters,” said the trio after the meeting that reportedly ended in acrimony.

On May 29, Trump lambasted the local administration saying “total lack of leadership” in Minneapolis after reports of rioting and loot emerged. The US President said that he has talked to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and military will take control in case of any difficulty, threatening that “shooting” will start if anyone tries to loot public property.

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Twitter immediately flagged the tweet for violating the rules of the micro-blogging platform about glorifying violence and said that it has taken action in the interest of preventing others from being inspired to commit violent acts. However, it decided not to remove the tweet saying it is important that the public still be able to see the Tweet given its relevance to ongoing matters of public importance.

'Committed to free expression'

The message was cross-posted on Facebook but the social media platform took no action against the controversial post which, later, Zuckerberg defended as free expression. Facebook CEO said in a statement though he has a “visceral negative reaction to this kind of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric”, the social media platform should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause an imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelt out in clear policies.

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