America ‘on fire’: Facebook watched Trump ignite hatred

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COLUMBUS, Ohio – Reports of hateful and violent posts began pouring in on Facebook on the night of May 28 last year, shortly after President Donald Trump sent a warning on social media that burglars in Minneapolis will be shot.

It’s been three days since Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes until the 46-year-old Black man fainted, showing no signs of life. A video taken by a bystander has been watched millions of times online. The protests occupied Minnesota’s largest city and would soon spread to cities across America.

But it was only after Trump posted about Floyd’s death that reports of violence and hate speech “quickly” rose on Facebook across the country, an internal company review in the former’s social media post president reveals.

“These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd and I won’t let that happen,” Trump wrote at 9:53 am on May 28 from his Twitter and Facebook accounts. “Any difficulty and we’ll take control but, when the theft starts the shooting starts!”

The former president has been suspended from Twitter and Facebook.

The leaked Facebook documents provide a first-hand look at how Trump’s social media posts have sparked more anger in a deeply divided country that is eventually “burning” with reports of hate speech and violence across the platform. Facebook’s own internal, automated controls, are meant to catch posts that violate the rules, which predicted with nearly 90% certainty that Trump’s message violated the tech company’s policies against motivation. of violence.

However, the tech giant did not take any action on Trump’s message.

Offline, the next day, protests – some turned violent – engulfed almost every city in the US, large and small.

“When people look back at the role of Facebook, they don’t say Facebook caused it, but Facebook is definitely the megaphone,” said Lanier Holt, a communications professor at Ohio State University. “I don’t think there’s any way they can get out of saying that they made the situation worse.”

Meanwhile, social media rival Twitter, was quick to respond at the time by covering Trump’s tweet with a warning and banning users from sharing it further.

Facebook’s internal discussions were announced in disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by former Facebook employee turned whistleblower Frances Haugen’s legal counsel. The redacted versions received by Congress were acquired by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Trump is one of many high -profile users, including politicians and celebrities, who are not included in some or all of the company’s normal enforcement policy.

Reports of hate speech and violence were mostly limited to the Minneapolis region after Floyd’s death, documents revealed.

“However, after Trump’s post on May 28, situations really escalated across the country,” according to the memo, published on June 5 of last year.

Internal analysis shows a five -fold increase in Facebook violence reports, while hate speech complaints tripled in the days after Trump’s post. False news reports on the platform have doubled. Trump’s message reshares have generated “huge amounts of hateful and violent comments,” many of which have worked to eliminate Facebook. Some of those comments include calls to “start shooting at these thugs” and “f—- the white.”

As of June 2, “we can clearly see that the whole country is basically‘ burning, ’” a Facebook employee wrote about rising reports of hate speech and violence in the June 5 memo.

Facebook says it’s impossible to separate how many of the hate speech reports were driven by Trump’s own post or the controversy over Floyd’s death.

“This increase in user reports resulted from a critical moment in history for the racial justice movement – not from a Donald Trump post about it,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “Facebook often shows what’s going on in society and the only way to avoid spikes in user reports at the moment is to not allow them to be discussed on our platform, which is something we never will do. “

But the internal findings also raise questions about public statements made by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last year as he defended his decision to leave Trump’s post untouched.

On May 29, for example, Zuckerberg said the company was looking closely at whether Trump’s words broke any of its policies and decided they didn’t. Zuckerberg also said he left the post because it warned people of Trump’s plan to deploy troops.

“I know a lot of people are angry that we have neglected the President’s posts, but our position is that we should enable as much disclosure as possible unless it poses an imminent risk of specific injuries or risks mentioned. in clear rules, ”Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook account on the night of May 29, as protests erupted across the country.

However, Facebook’s own automated enforcement controls determined that the post was likely to violate the rules.

“Our classifier of violence and incitement is almost 90% certain that this post (Trump) violated … Facebook’s policy,” the review read on June 5th.

It contradicts Zuckerberg’s talks with civil rights leaders last year to quell concerns that Trump’s post is a particular threat to Black people protesting Floyd’s death, Rashad Robinson said. president of Color of Change, a civil rights advocacy group. The group also led a Facebook boycott in the weeks following Trump’s post.

“To be clear, I had a direct argument with Zuckerberg days after that post where he heated me up and he specifically pushed any notion that it violated their policies,” Robinson said in an AP interview last year. week.

A Facebook spokesperson said its internal controls don’t always correctly predict when a post violates the rules and the human review, made in the case of Trump’s post, is more accurate.

To curb the former president’s ability to cause hateful reactions on its platform, Facebook employees last year suggested the company limit re -sharing to similar posts that could violate Facebook’s policies in the future.

But Trump continued to use his Facebook account, followed by more than 32 million, to inspire his supporters throughout the rest of his presidency. In the days leading up to a deadly siege of Washington on Jan. 6, Trump regularly promoted false statements that widespread voter fraud had caused him to lose the White House, prompting hundreds of his fans raid the US Capitol and demand the results of a fair. overthrow the election.

Until the mess at the Capitol ended, and as Trump was about to leave the White House, Facebook removed him from the platform in January, announcing that his account would be suspended until at least 2023.

There’s a reason Facebook waited so long to take any action, said Jennifer Mercieca, a professor at Texas A&M University who closely studied the former president’s rhetoric.

“Facebook has really benefited from Trump and Trump’s ability to draw attention and engagement through anger,” Mercieca said. “They want Trump to continue.”

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This story has been updated to correct the spelling of the Ohio State University professor’s first name to Lanier.

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