Facebook suspends Donald Trump for 2 years, then will reassess
San Francisco, Jun 4: Facebook said it will suspend former President Donald Trump's accounts for two years following its finding that he stoked violence ahead of the deadly January 6 insurrection.
At the end of this period, we will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded. We will evaluate external factors, including instances of violence, restrictions on peaceful assembly and other markers of civil unrest, Nick Clegg, Facebook's vice president of global affairs, wrote in a blog post Friday.
Facebook also plans to end a contentious policy championed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg that automatically exempted politicians from rules that banned hate speech and abuse.
The company has said it has never applied this policy to Trump.
The social media giant said on Friday that while it will still apply this newsworthiness" exemption to certain posts it deems to be in the public interest even if they violate Facebook rules, it will no longer treat material posted by politicians any differently from that posted by anyone else.
In addition, Facebook said it will make public whenever it does apply the exemption to a post.
The announcements are in response to recommendations from the company's quasi-independent oversight board.
Last month that panel upheld a decision by Facebook to keep former Trump indefinitely suspended but said the company could not merely suspend him indefinitely and gave it six months to decide what to do with his accounts.
In its decision last month, the board agreed with Facebook that two of Trump's January 6 posts severely violated the content standards of both Facebook and Instagram.
We love you. You're very special, Trump said to the rioters in the first post. In the second, he called them great patriots and told them to remember this day forever.
Those violated Facebook's rules against praising or supporting people engaged in violence, the board said, warranting the suspension.
Specifically, the board cited Facebook's rules against dangerous individuals and organisations, which prohibit anyone who proclaims a violent mission and bans posts that express support or praise of these people or groups.
Facebook has had a general newsworthiness exemption since 2016. But it garnered attention in 2019 when Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs and communications, announced that speech from politicians will be treated as newsworthy content that should, as a general rule, be seen and heard.
The newsworthiness exemption, he explained in a blog post at the time, meant that if someone makes a statement or shares a post which breaks our community standards we will still allow it on our platform if we believe the public interest in seeing it outweighs the risk of harm.
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Online fraud: Hotel chef from Udupi cheated of over Rs 1 lakh by WhatsApp contact
Udupi: Udupi City Police have registered a case of online fraud after a 62-year-old hotel chef was allegedly cheated of Rs 1.13 lakh by a woman who befriended him on WhatsApp, claiming to be based in London.
The victim, identified as Pandu Kariappa Poojary, a resident of Kuthpadi in Udupi, was working at a hotel in Mangaluru.
He reportedly came into contact with a woman identifying herself as Emilda William on WhatsApp. During their interactions, she told Poojary that she planned to start a cosmetics and hotel business in India and would meet him during a visit to Mangaluru.
On April 7, Emilda sent Poojary a flight ticket from London to Delhi via WhatsApp. The following day, Poojary received a phone call from a woman who informed him that Emilda had arrived at Delhi airport carrying a demand draft worth Rs 5 crore along with other items. The caller allegedly asked him to pay Rs 70,000.
Subsequently, Poojary also received a call from Emilda, who was reportedly crying and spoke about the situation. Believing the claims, he transferred a total of Rs 1,13,300 in phases using a scanner. He later realised that he had been cheated.
