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.
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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.
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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.
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