Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg made a strong free speech statement in refusing to censor President Donald Trump’s questionable posts on Black Lives Matter protests, but Middle East activists and journalists claim their accounts have been dumped during the last few months. One journalist said Facebook only backed fee speech when it was politically advantageous. Syrian journalist Mohammed Asakra had his account deleted in May along with those of activists who documented the human rights abuses of the Syrian government. (NBC News, June 15, 2020, by Olivia Solon)
Facebook now says it will abide by Trump’s executive order and not fact-check lies and misleading information during the 2020 elections. This in spite of its admission of the existence of “information operations” that influenced the 2016 election. Democratic nominee Joe Biden had called on Facebook to stop trumpeting false information and employ fact-checking. He also asked for bans on threatening behavior and lies about how to vote. (PCWorld, June 12,2020, by Mark Hachman)