Social media giant Facebook has said that it removing all content mentioning "stop the steal" as part of a raft of measures to supposedly stem misinformation and incitements of violence on its platform.
Facebook made this statement after confirming that it would uphold its decision last week to suspend former President Donald Trump from posting for at least two weeks. The company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that, at the time, the purported risks of the president using the service during this period were too great.
In addition, the company said on Monday, Jan. 11, that it would also continue to pause all U.S. ads about politics and elections, including those from Trump.
"With continued attempts to organize events against the outcome of the U.S. presidential election that can lead to violence, and use of the ['stop the steal'] term by those involved in Wednesday's violence in DC, we're taking this additional step in the lead up to the inauguration," Guy Rosen, the company's vice president of integrity and Monika Bickert, its vice president of global policy management wrote in a company blog post.
"It may take some time to scale up our enforcement of this new step but we have already removed a significant number of posts," they added.
Facebook ban follows censorship moves from other tech companies
Facebook is just one of the many big tech companies that have taken steps in recent days to silence the president's personal accounts or online communities devoted to him, citing rules prohibiting content that incites violence. Others include Twitter, Snap and Reddit.
These moves followed the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. These companies claim that the president and his allies urged those involved to march on Capitol Hill as lawmakers convened to certify the electoral college vote from the November elections.
"In this moment, the risk to our democracy was too big that we felt we had to take the unprecedented step of what is an indefinite ban, and I'm glad we did," Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg told Reuters in an interview Monday.
"This shows that the president is not above the policies we have," Sandberg said to Reuters Breakingviews columnist Gina Chon.
In addition, the company also claims that it's doing so as part of protective efforts against violence and misinformation in the lead-up to the presidential inauguration following last week's events on Capitol Hill.
"We began preparing for Inauguration Day last year. 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," Rosen and Bickert wrote.
Facebook started censoring after backlash, but now faces backlash from investors
Facebook has long taken a light touch to policing speech posted by politicians, especially compared to other social media services, such as Twitter.
The company started reversing course from that position and started applying labels to the president's posts this summer. This was due to backlash that the company received, including an advertiser boycott when it declined to act against Trump's supposedly incendiary rhetoric around the Black Lives Matter protests that sprung up throughout the United States. (Related: Facebook smoking gun: Conservatives targeted for censorship because of their political beliefs… Facebook rigging elections.)
But now the company is facing a different form of backlash. Facebook's stocks fell by as much as much as 4.5 percent on Monday. Many investors balked at the company's moves to ban Trump which were seen to raise concerns about future regulation.
Despite this, the company remains adamant with Sandberg stating that the company has "no plans" to lift the ban for now.
Follow Censorship.news for more on how social media companies are suppressing conservative voices.
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