Facebook Rejected Employee Push to Throttle Misleading Political Posts

On Nov. 3, Facebook added an advisory under a post from President Donald Trump that included the unfounded claim that his opponents were trying to “steal the election.” Followers of Trump shared the post 26,000 times as he made his Facebook account a key part of his arsenal in raising doubts about the outcome of U.S. elections.

Months earlier, dozens of Facebook employees from the company’s Civic Integrity unit, which is in charge of determining how the company handles election-related content, had anticipated and tried to prevent the spread of such posts. Shocked into action by an incendiary Trump post targeting Black Lives Matter protesters, they proposed stricter penalties for politicians and public figures on Facebook, such as blocking the ability to comment or easily share posts if they ran afoul of the company’s policies.