Facebook reportedly made an exception to its hate speech policy for Donald Trump

In a widely criticized move, Donald Trump called Monday for a "complete shutdown" of Muslims entering the U.S. The Republican presidential hopeful had posted a video of him reading the campaign statement on Facebook.

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore reported Trump's statement to Facebook as hate speech, and asked others to do the same.

But Facebook, despite having a policy against hate speech defined as "calling for violence, exclusion, or segregation for a protected category," "degrading generalizations," and "dismissing an entire protected category," didn't remove Trump's post, Fast Company reports.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

So Fast Company ran a little test, using a dummy account to post an Islamaphobic message similar to Trump's. Theirs was taken down within a few hours of being flagged. Facebook said the difference with Trump's post is the context:

In other words, presidential candidates can get away with things you can't.