Facebook will allow speech from politicians to break its 'community standards'

Facebook announced it’s letting politicians say the kind of stuff that normal users can’t — just in time for the heated 2020 presidential race.

Starting today, Facebook will now view all speech from politicians as “newsworthy content” meaning it will be exempt from the platform’s community standards. In addition, Facebook reiterated its existing policy that exempts politicians’ speech from its fact-checking program. 

The company notes that it has had a newsworthiness exemption since 2016, which allowed statements and shared posts that broke Facebook guidelines if the public interest outweighed the risk of harm. However, from today going forward, content from politicians will be seen as newsworthy as a “general rule.” Read more...