FILE -
In this
June 20,
2020,
file
photo,
President
Donald
Trump
arrives
on stage
to speak
at a
campaign
rally at
the BOK
Center,
in
Tulsa,
Okla.
Reports
of
hateful
and
violent
speech
on
Facebook
poured
in on
the
night of
May 28
after
President
Donald
Trump
hit send
on a
social
media
post
warning
that
looters
who
joined
protests
following
Floyd's
death
last
year
would be
shot,
according
to
internal
Facebook
documents
shared
with The
Associated
Press.
(AP
Photo/Evan
Vucci,
File) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
FILE -
In this
April
10,
2018,
file
photo,
Facebook
CEO Mark
Zuckerberg
takes
his seat
to
testify
before a
joint
hearing
of the
Commerce
and
Judiciary
Committees
on
Capitol
Hill in
Washington.
Reports
of
hateful
and
violent
speech
on
Facebook
poured
in on
the
night of
May 28
after
President
Donald
Trump
hit send
on a
social
media
post
warning
that
looters
who
joined
protests
following
Floyd's
death
last
year
would be
shot,
according
to
internal
Facebook
documents
shared
with The
Associated
Press.
(AP
Photo/Alex
Brandon,
File) |
|
America
'on
fire':
Facebook
watched
as Trump
ignited
hate
By
AMANDA
SEITZ
apnews.com
COLUMBUS,
Ohio -
The
reports
of
hateful
and
violent
posts on
Facebook
started
pouring
in on
the
night of
May 28
last
year,
soon
after
then-President
Donald
Trump
sent a
warning
on
social
media
that
looters
in
Minneapolis
would be
shot.
It had
been
three
days
since
Minneapolis
police
officer
Derek
Chauvin
kneeled
on the
neck of
George
Floyd
for more
than
eight
minutes
until
the
46-year-old
Black
man lost
consciousness,
showing
no signs
of life.
A video
taken by
a
bystander
had been
viewed
millions
of times
online.
Protests
had
taken
over
Minnesota’s
largest
city and
would
soon
spread
throughout
cities
across
America.
But it
wasn’t
until
after
Trump
posted
about
Floyd’s
death
that the
reports
of
violence
and hate
speech
increased
“rapidly”
on
Facebook
across
the
country,
an
internal
company
analysis
of the
ex-president’s
social
media
post
reveals.
“These
THUGS
are
dishonoring
the
memory
of
George
Floyd
and I
won’t
let that
happen,”
Trump
wrote at
9:53
a.m. on
May 28
from his
Twitter
and
Facebook
accounts.
“Any
difficulty
and we
will
assume
control
but,
when the
looting
starts
the
shooting
starts!”
The
former
president
has
since
been
suspended
from
both
Twitter
and
Facebook.
Leaked
Facebook
documents
provide
a
first-hand
look at
how
Trump’s
social
media
posts
ignited
more
anger in
an
already
deeply
divided
country
that was
eventually
lit “on
fire”
with
reports
of hate
speech
and
violence
across
the
platform.
Facebook’s
own
internal,
automated
controls,
meant to
catch
posts
that
violate
rules,
predicted
with
almost
90%
certainty
that
Trump’s
message
broke
the tech
company’s
rules
against
inciting
violence.
Yet, the
tech
giant
didn’t
take any
action
on
Trump’s
message.
Offline,
the next
day,
protests
— some
of which
turned
violent
—
engulfed
nearly
every
U.S.
city,
big and
small.
“When
people
look
back at
the role
Facebook
played,
they
won’t
say
Facebook
caused
it, but
Facebook
was
certainly
the
megaphone,”
said
Lanier
Holt, a
communications
professor
at Ohio
State
University.
“I don’t
think
there’s
any way
they can
get out
of
saying
that
they
exacerbated
the
situation.”
Social
media
rival
Twitter,
meanwhile,
responded
quickly
at the
time by
covering
Trump’s
tweet
with a
warning
and
prohibiting
users
from
sharing
it any
further.
Facebook’s
internal
discussions
were
revealed
in
disclosures
made to
the
Securities
and
Exchange
Commission
and
provided
to
Congress
in
redacted
form by
former
Facebook
employee-turned-whistleblower
Frances
Haugen’s
legal
counsel.
The
redacted
versions
received
by
Congress
were
obtained
by a
consortium
of news
organizations,
including
The
Associated
Press.
The Wall
Street
Journal
previously
reported
that
Trump
was one
of many
high-profile
users,
including
politicians
and
celebrities,
exempted
from
some or
all of
the
company’s
normal
enforcement
policies.
Hate
speech
and
violence
reports
had been
mostly
limited
to the
Minneapolis
region
after
Floyd’s
death,
the
documents
reveal.
“However,
after
Trump’s
post on
May 28,
situations
really
escalated
across
the
country,”
according
to the
memo,
published
on June
5 of
last
year.
The
internal
analysis
shows a
five-fold
increase
in
violence
reports
on
Facebook,
while
complaints
of hate
speech
tripled
in the
days
following
Trump’s
post.
Reports
of false
news on
the
platform
doubled.
Reshares
of
Trump’s
message
generated
a
“substantial
amount
of
hateful
and
violent
comments,”
many of
which
Facebook
worked
to
remove.
Some of
those
comments
included
calls to
“start
shooting
these
thugs”
and “f—-
the
white.”
By June
2, “we
can see
clearly
that the
entire
country
was
basically
‘on
fire,’”
a
Facebook
employee
wrote of
the
increase
in hate
speech
and
violence
reports
in the
June 5
memo.
Facebook
says
it’s
impossible
to
separate
how many
of the
hate
speech
reports
were
driven
by
Trump’s
post
itself
or the
controversy
over
Floyd’s
death.
“This
spike in
user
reports
resulted
from a
critical
moment
in
history
for the
racial
justice
movement
— not
from a
single
Donald
Trump
post
about
it,” a
Facebook
spokesperson
said in
a
statement.
“Facebook
often
reflects
what’s
happening
in
society
and the
only way
to
prevent
spikes
in user
reports
during
these
moments
is to
not
allow
them to
be
discussed
on our
platform
at all,
which is
something
we would
never
do.”
But the
internal
findings
also
raise
questions
about
public
statements
Facebook
CEO Mark
Zuckerberg
made
last
year as
he
defended
his
decision
to leave
Trump’s
post
untouched.
On May
29, for
example,
Zuckerberg
said the
company
looked
closely
to see
if
Trump’s
words
broke
any of
its
policies
and
concluded
that
they did
not.
Zuckerberg
also
said he
left the
post up
because
it
warned
people
of
Trump’s
plan to
deploy
troops.
“I know
many
people
are
upset
that
we’ve
left the
President’s
posts
up, but
our
position
is that
we
should
enable
as much
expression
as
possible
unless
it will
cause
imminent
risk of
specific
harms or
dangers
spelled
out in
clear
policies,”
Zuckerberg
wrote on
his
Facebook
account
the
night of
May 29,
as
protests
erupted
around
the
country.
Yet,
Facebook’s
own
automated
enforcement
controls
determined
the post
likely
did
break
the
rules.
“Our
violence
and
incitement
classifier
was
almost
90%
certain
that
this
(Trump)
post
violated
Facebook’s
...
policy,”
the June
5
analysis
reads.
That
contradicts
conversations
Zuckerberg
had with
civil
rights
leaders
last
year to
quell
concerns
that
Trump’s
post was
a
specific
threat
to Black
people
protesting
Floyd’s
death,
said
Rashad
Robinson,
the
president
of Color
of
Change,
a civil
rights
advocacy
group.
The
group
also
spearheaded
a
boycott
of
Facebook
in the
weeks
following
Trump’s
post.
“To be
clear, I
had a
direct
argument
with
Zuckerberg
days
after
that
post
where he
gaslit
me and
he
specifically
pushed
back on
any
notion
that
this
violated
their
rules,”
Robinson
said in
an
interview
with the
AP last
week.
A
Facebook
spokesperson
said
that its
internal
controls
do not
always
correctly
predict
when a
post has
violated
rules
and that
human
review,
which
was done
in the
case of
Trump’s
post, is
more
accurate.
To curb
the
ex-president’s
ability
to stoke
hateful
reactions
on its
platform,
Facebook
employees
suggested
last
year
that the
company
limit
reshares
on
similar
posts
that may
violate
Facebook’s
rules in
the
future.
But
Trump
continued
to use
his
Facebook
account,
which
more
than 32
million
follow,
to fire
up his
supporters
throughout
much of
the
remainder
of his
presidency.
In the
days
leading
up to a
deadly
siege in
Washington
on Jan.
6, Trump
regularly
promoted
false
claims
that
widespread
voter
fraud
caused
him to
lose the
White
House,
spurring
hundreds
of his
fans to
storm
the U.S.
Capitol
and
demand
the
results
of a
fair
election
be
overturned.
It
wasn’t
until
after
the
Capitol
riot,
and as
Trump
was on
his way
out of
the
White
House,
that
Facebook
pulled
him off
the
platform
in
January,
announcing
his
account
would be
suspended
until at
least
2023.
There’s
a reason
Facebook
waited
so long
to take
any
action,
said
Jennifer
Mercieca,
a
professor
at Texas
A&M
University
who
closely
studied
the
former
president’s
rhetoric.
“Facebook
really
benefited
from
Trump
and
Trump’s
ability
to draw
attention
and
engagement
through
outrage,”
Mercieca
said.
“They
wanted
Trump to
keep
going
on.”
___
This
story
has been
updated
to
correct
the
spelling
of the
first
name of
the Ohio
State
University
professor
to
Lanier.
___
See full
coverage
of the
“The
Facebook
Papers”
here:
https://apnews.com/hub/the-facebook-papers
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|