The CEO informed staffers that although Bannon breached some policies, they were not sufficient to warrant banning. Bannon had suggested that Anthony Fauci deserves beheading.
On Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg told the staff at Facebook that Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former advisor, had not abused enough company policies for him to warrant being prohibited from the platform. Bannon had suggested that two US officials should be beheaded and that their heads should be displayed outside the White House to ‘caution’ others.
On 5th November, during his podcast program, Bannon seemed to encourage violence against Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert, and Christopher Wray, the FBI director. The podcast called ‘the War Room’ was shared as a video on various media outlets like Facebook.
Twitter permanently banned Bannon’s War Room, stating the podcast account had breached its policy about encouraging violence and, thus, the reason for the ban. Facebook pulled down the video after around 10 hours online but failed to suspend the account.
On Thursday, Zuckerberg informed all employees during a meeting that, ‘We have particular regulations on the number of times you should breach specific policies before we permanently deactivate your account.’
‘While I admit that the felonies here almost fall into that category, they were not that serious.’
Andy Stone, Facebook’s spokesman, informed Reuters the company would take more steps against Bannon’s page, ‘if more breaches occur.’
The previous Friday, Facebook removed a network of other pages associated with Bannon, peddling false information on the presidential election. It happened after Avaaz Avaaz, an activist group, flagged them. Avaaz revealed that seven of the most prominent pages had attracted almost 2.5 million followers.
According to Stone, Facebook had removed ‘various groups for using inappropriate, artificial moves to increase the number of individuals who viewed their content.’
Bannon was unavailable for comment at the time.
During the meeting on Thursday, Zuckerberg also admitted that Joe Biden chastised him and remarked that the firm was also as anxious as Biden’s team about social media. In December, Biden informed the New York Times editorial board that he had ‘never liked Facebook,’ and to him, Zuckerberg presented ‘a serious issue.’
On Monday, the deputy communications director for Biden’s campaign, Bill Russo, told off the social media platform in several tweets because of how they dealt with the election.
He wrote, ‘During the election, Facebook presented wrong information, but days after the election it is even worse, and it is damaging our democracy’s structure.’
image TY Lim / Shutterstock.com
