Facebook employees argued to remove Trump's post as hate speech: Report

As the US political drama unfolds, a new report involving Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Facebook has come to light. A WSJ report, citing people familiar with the matter, claims that some Facebook employees had argued that a few posts of Trump about banning Muslims from entering the US are hate speech and should be taken off the platform. However, it Mark Zuckerberg who instead said that they shouldn't be banned as it wouldn't be appropriate to censor a presidential candidate.The Facebook post asking for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims was the cause of debate. "Since then, Trump has seemed to back away from the controversial proposal saying his national security policies would block immigrants from countries with great terrorism," points out IBTimes."We try to find the right balance between enabling people to express themselves while maintaining a respectful experience for our global community," a Facebook spokesman told The Guardian.There is no place for hate on Facebook. Rather than focusing on these claims we work with partners to fight hate speech and foster counter speech," a Facebook spokeswoman had said. This was said as German prosecutors were considering whether to press charges against Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives for failing to staunch a tide of racist and threatening posts on the social network during an influx of migrants into Europe.Following a public outcry and pressure by German politicians for failing to delete a rash of racist postings on Facebook, the Silicon Valley social networking giant earlier this year hired Arvato, a business services unit of Bertelsmann, to monitor and delete racist posts.It was just recently that we saw how Facebook put forth its Community Standards statement defending ban on several accounts after the killing of terrorist Burhan Wani. Huma Dar, an academic associated with the University of California, Berkeley and a pro-Kashmir activist had her account allegedly banned by Facebook for showing solidarity. On confronting Facebook about the ban, the social giant had told us, “Our Community Standards prohibit content that praises or supports terrorists, terrorist organisations or terrorism, and we remove it as soon as we’re made aware of it. We welcome discussion on these subjects but any terrorist content has to be clearly put in a context which condemns these organisations or their violent activities.”