A recent audit has spurred attacks on Facebook for “allowing hate speech and disinformation to thrive.” This is increasingly alarming as the November presidential election nears, since the infiltration of hate and lies can severely influence voters’ decisions.

Social media platforms have a responsibility to hold freedom of speech and nondiscrimination at the same level of priority and importance. Unfortunately, the report found that Facebook consistently values freedom of speech over nondiscriminatory posts.

This can easily be seen in the failure and refusal by Facebook to report, flag or remove three discriminatory posts made by President Donald Trump in May 2020. One of these being the infamous, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

While other platforms such as Twitter restricted and flagged the post in direct violation of their rules, Facebook ignored the racist origin and violent intentions within the post. Facebook continues to allow politicians to openly break their rules of nondiscrimination under the pretense of freedom of expression. 

This prompted the “Stop Hate for Profit” movement, which resulted in over 300 companies pulling their ads from Facebook. This was beneficial in raising public awareness of Facebook’s seemingly corrupt and discriminatory actions and policies.

After the audit exposed Facebook for a severe lack in nondiscrimination and civil rights policies, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, the COO, tried to improve the public image of the platform by meeting with several civil rights leaders. However, this only proved the inability of Facebook operatives to handle this matter with the importance it deserves, as they repeatedly refused to enact the demands of the civil rights leaders present in the meeting.

Time and time again, Facebook has shown the public that while they may have improved in removing discriminatory posts within the past few years, they also continually exempt influential politicians from these rules, allowing spaces for hate speech and discrimination to thrive.

It is very clear that Facebook presents an obstacle to the presidential election, as voters are likely to be influenced by the hate and lies the platform allows. Until nondiscrimination and anti-hate speech is prioritized at the same level as freedom of speech, influential people will continue to take advantage of this disparity to corrupt the public, as well as elections.

While the Stop Hate for Profit campaign is beneficial, it will take policy and algorithm change, plus internal action within Facebook for consistent progress to occur.