Facebook Fact-Checkers Ordered To Let Trump's Falsehoods Slide: Report

MENLO PARK, CA — Misrepresent the threats posed by climate change to an audience of nearly 3 billion?

Not a problem.

Falsely claim America left behind $85 billion of its best military equipment in Afghanistan?

It's all good.

These demonstrably false statements, along with many others, are now approved for public consumption at Facebook after Meta, the social media behemoth’s parent company, ordered fact-checkers to let Donald Trump’s falsehoods slide going forward after the former President announced his 2024 presidential election bid, CNN reports.

Facebook banned Trump from its platform in the aftermath of the former President’s baseless claims about election fraud in 2020 fueled the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol.

But the former President continues to have a presence on the platform through many groups on the platform.

One such group, “Team Trump,” which is run by the former president’s operatives, remains active with 2.3 followers.

Facebook pays third-party fact checkers to label misinformation as such.

But the company allows politicians more latitude, and since Trump’s announcement Tuesday night, he now falls into that category.

The memo obtained by CNN said that “if former President Trump makes a clear, public announcement that he is running for office, he would be considered a politician under our program policies.”

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone described the memo as “a reiteration of our long-standing policy should not be news to anyone.”

Facebook's announcement comes amid a period of extreme turbulence in Silicon Valley's social media sector with widespread layoffs and Elon Musk plunging rival Twitter into chaos.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2020 faced an internal revolt after the platform allowed Trump to incite violence amid the George Floyd protests.

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump said as protests raged in May, 2020.

The Facebook employees said they were acting in support of demonstrators across the county and added out-of-office replies to their emails saying they were protesting, The New York Times reports.

Facebook banned Trump indefinitely last year after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” Zuckerberg said in a statement announcing the Trump ban.

“We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”

Read more at CNN