As cities and communities across the United States anxiously await a verdict trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer accused of killing George Floyd, Facebook says it is “do what we can “to prepare. The company says it “works around the clock” to identify potential threats on and off its platforms. Specifically, he will remove messages and events that call for people to bring weapons to Minneapolis and says he will consider other places as “high risk places”, depending on how the situation unfolds. Public officials in cities like new York and Angels expect there will be protests once the jury announces its verdict. Facebook says its goal is to protect peaceful protests while limiting content that could lead to civil unrest.
“We want to strike the right balance between allowing people to talk about the trial and what the verdict means, while doing our part to protect everyone’s safety,” the company said. “We are going to allow people to discuss, criticize and criticize the trial and the lawyers involved.”
Additionally, the company says it works to protect the memory of George Floyd and his family from harassment by removing posts that praise, celebrate or poke fun at his death. He says he can also preventively limit content that he says will end up violating his community standards.
Facebook is clearly hoping to avoid a situation like the one that occurred last August. The company failed to event page who called on members of the Kenosha Guard Facebook group to “take up arms” in response to the protests that erupted after the death of Jacob Blake. Although hundreds of people reported the event to Facebook, the company never removed the page. After Facebook said it deleted both the Kenosha Guard and their event pages, it emerged that the latter was in fact deleted by its organizers. Mark Zuckerberg attributed the moderation error to a “operational error”, and said that the people who initially reviewed the reports did not properly forward them to the right team.
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