But our planning took on new urgency after last week’s violence in Washington, D.C., and we are treating the next two weeks as a major civic event. We’re taking additional steps and using the same teams and technologies we used during the general election to stop misinformation and content that could incite further violence during these next few weeks.
We are now removing content containing the phrase “stop the steal” under our Coordinating Harm policy from Facebook and Instagram.
It doesn't say "We are now removing all content...."
We removed the original Stop the Steal group in November and have continued to remove Pages, groups and events that violate any of our policies, including calls for violence.
So "stop the steal" is a search term, and it's being used to quickly get to things that might violate anti-violence policies. There's still analysis of whether those policies — which apply to everything on the site — are violated.
We’ve been allowing robust conversations related to the election outcome and that will continue.
Okay. Robust. We can still have robust conversations. Facebook has "been allowing" them. We can be robust — but not violent — because Facebook has, thus far, allowed it. We have freedom at the sufferance of Facebook.
But with continued attempts to organize events against the outcome of the US presidential election that can lead to violence, and use of the term by those involved in Wednesday’s violence in DC, we’re taking this additional step in the lead up to the inauguration....
As always, we will continue to remove content, disable accounts and work with law enforcement when there is a risk of physical harm or direct threats to public safety....
Facebook should take steps to keep people from using it to plan acts of violence, but it should not obstruct the planning of rallies and protests. What should it do when there's a category of rally that has had an element of violence? I think it should work at achieving viewpoint neutrality. But the Inauguration this year is a unique situation, and special focus is justified.
After the inauguration, our label on posts that attempt to delegitimize the election results will reflect that Joe Biden is the sitting president.
Hey, remember "Not My President Day," February 20th, 2017? From the Wikipedia article on the topic:
"Not My Presidents Day"... was a series of rallies against the president of the United States, Donald Trump, held on Washington's Birthday... Protests were held in dozens of cities throughout the United States.... The marches were mostly coordinated through Facebook....
