Facebook’s Troubles and Policy Changes are More about Trump than about Facebook

By Larry Magid

This post first appeared on Forbes.com

In response to hate speech, racism, divisiveness and likely, Donald Trump, Coca-Cola, Verizon, Unilever and other companies are pulling ads from Facebook and, to some extent Twitter. Facebook’s stock plunged more than 8% on Friday.

And Facebook is now responding. After months of refusing to apply its terms of service to posts from Trump and other politicians, Mark Zuckerberg on Friday wrote that Facebook wants “to do more to prohibit the kind of divisive and inflammatory language that has been used to sow discord,” including labeling or — in some cases — removing posts from politicians. “Even if a politician or government official says it, if we determine that content may lead to violence or deprive people of their right to vote, we will take that content down,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post.

While Donald Trump isn’t the only politician to use Facebook and Twitter to post false and divisive statements, he is certainly the most prominent. And, after years of allowing him to say whatever he wants, Twitter recently started taking the baby steps of putting labels on tweets for being misleading about mail-in ballots or glorifying violence when Trump wrote “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

Trump’s response was to issue an executive order which he hopes will lead to a revision of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and take away social media’s immunization against lawsuits over what its users post. As I pointed out in my Mercury News column, that could backfire on Trump because it could force social media companies to police Trump’s posts that might trigger lawsuits from those he demeans without evidence.

The question I’m asking is why now? Both Twitter’s recent actions and Facebook’s change of policy are in response to abuses that have been going on for years. And, for the most part, advertisers have been silent on these abuses. It’s only now that major brands are using the power of the purse to pressure Facebook and Twitter. We may have reached the tipping point.

One reason could be the reaction to the killings of George Floyd and other African Americans at the hands of police. The visceral response to these killings has been deep and wide, affecting every aspect of society, including big business. My inbox is full of companies proclaiming support for Black Lives Matter or, at least, “racial justice.” Trump has failed to grasp the moment and uses his social media platform to rail against protesters rather than the murder of Black men by police. He’s made unsubstantiated claims and incendiary posts that do more to divide than unite.

Trump’s response to COVID-19 hasn’t helped. Even states with Trump-supporting governors are issuing orders to wear masks in public, even though Trump has actively discouraged mask wearing by his refusal to wear one and allowing most of the attendees at his indoor rallies to avoid wearing masks despite growing evidence that they can greatly reduce the chance of spreading the Coronavirus.

But I suspect the big change is Trump’s poll numbers which, said Fox News, “have some conservatives nervous.” While he was never popular with the majority, it appears that he’s even beginning to lose some of his base, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.

Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan said it best. In her recent column, The Week It Went South for Trump (paywall), she wrote “half of his base is mortified by his antics and shallowness,” and observed that “ The real picture at the Tulsa rally was not the empty seats so much as the empty faces—the bored looks, the yawning and phone checking, as if everyone was re-enacting something, hearing some old song and trying to remember how it felt a few years ago, when you heard it the first time.”

None of this bears directly on brands pulling their ads from Facebook, but it all contributes to the notion that Facebook is allowing Trump to use its platform in ways that are increasingly seen as negative.

Brands take a stand

While I don’t expect major brands to publicly weigh-in on presidential politics, we are seeing companies make it very clear that they will no longer put their money into platforms that help sow divisiveness. Without any direct reference to Trump, Unilever, which owns brands like like Dove, Lipton, Hellman’s and Vaseline, said in a statement, “Given our Responsibility Framework and the polarized atmosphere in the U.S., we have decided that starting now through at least the end of the year, we will not run brand advertising in social media newsfeed platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in the U.S. Continuing to advertise on these platforms at this time would not add value to people and society.”

Cola-Cola CEO James Quincey, wrote “There is no place for racism in the world and there is no place for racism on social media. The Coca-Cola Company will pause paid advertising on all social media platforms globally for at least 30 days.”

It’s not about politics, but racial justice, civil discourse and public health

Brands don’t like to become embroiled in politics, and even Facebook and Twitter have bent over backwards to try to avoid the appearance of allowing their platform to be perceived as biased towards one side or the other. But we may be reaching a tipping point where the conversation has gotten so bitter that companies feel the need to be more than silent but be one record opposing the rhetoric coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They don’t name Trump but they will associate themselves with causes that Trump has degraded, whether that’s Black Lives Matter or the need to wear masks in public to stem the spread of COVID-19. Enough is enough. At some point you want to make sure people don’t mark you down as being on the wrong side of history or silent in the face of what may someday be almost universally perceived as atrocious behavior.

Not just Trump

Of course, Donald Trump is far from the only one sowing dissent on social media. Millions of people of all political persuasions have used Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms to defame others, engage in flame wars, spread misinformation and use the platforms to spread hate speech and racism. But Trump is the President of the United States, arguably the most powerful person in the world, and when he routinely violates the norms — even of social media — he sets an example for both his followers and detractors to emulate.

Facebook’s action may be too late and it may be too little and — despite Zuckerberg’s claims to the contrary — may have been prompted or at least sped up by advertiser boycotts, but it’s a step in the right direction.

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Disclosure: Larry Magid is CEO of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit internet safety organization that receives support from Facebook, Twitter and other companies.