Mark Zuckerberg says Steve Bannon hasn’t violated enough policies to warrant suspension

In an open call to Facebook employees, Mark Zuckerberg said that Steve Bannon couldn’t be suspended from the social media platform because he hadn’t violated enough policies. This is despite calling for Anthony Fauci and FBI Director to be beheaded.

Bannon made the comments in an episode of his podcast The War Room. The episode was distributed as a video across Facebook; although it was deleted 10 hours after being shared, the company has stopped short of taking specific action against Bannon.

Zuckerberg explained why by saying that Facebook has “specific rules around how many times you need to violate certain policies before we will deactivate your account completely.” Bannon’s offenses “came close to crossing that line, but “they clearly did not cross the line,” the Facebook CEO argued.

Mark Zuckerberg claims Facebook has had a good election

Zuckerberg’s comments about Bannon were made in the context of a wider conversation about the platform’s performance during a tense election period.

Facebook had made a number of changes earlier this year in a bid to increase transparency and trust leading up to November 3rd. This page created by the company details a range of actions. It includes things like voter information and tools to help people register to vote, and investment in people and resources for fact checking and content moderation.”We’ve tripled the size of our teams working on safety and security to include more than 35,000 people. We’ve taken steps to reduce the spread of misinformation and provide more transparency and control around political ads,” the company states.

Such measures appear to be viewed as a success by Zuckerberg and Facebook’s leadership team. On the call, Zuckerberg referenced a number of statistics to highlight Facebook’s positive impact. He said that:

• 120 million people have visited the Facebook voter information center this year – this includes 33 million on November 3rd.
• Half of Facebook’s U.S. users have used the platform’s “Voting Information Center” at least 13 times.

However, the idea that Facebook has things under control is undermined by the fact that Donald Trump is still able to use the platform to air misinformation about the validity of the election result. One post, which suggests that Dominion – the cpmpany that provides technology used in the election process – has deleted votes for Trump has been shared more than 270,000 times.

However, like Twitter, the platform has flagged these posts with links to more information about the results of the election.

Could there be friction with the incoming Biden administration?

There have been rumblings that a Biden administration could pose new challenges for Facebook and Zuckerberg. A Twitter thread by Biden staffer Bill Russo claimed that the company “is shredding the fabric of our democracy” in the wake of the election has caused concern among some Facebook employees, who, according to Buzzfeed News, have shared the thread on internal message boards over the last few days.

With Facebook having no representation in Biden’s transition team – despite the President-Elect inviting many Silicon Valley executives -there are signs that the company’s status in Washington will be very different to what it was under the last Democrat president.

However, Zuckerberg was more positive. He said the company was not “averse” to legislation, and stated that the incoming administration and Facebook “will find ways to hopefully work together.”

What’s the significance?

Mark Zuckerberg’s comments in the wake of the election are a continuation of his somewhat disengaged optimism. There’s almost a hint of frustration with the company’s critics, for example, when he says things like “I know there’s this meme that companies only care about making money… I don’t think that with the content decisions we make that that’s true. We are trying to make the best decisions we can.”

It will be interesting to see how Zuckerberg’s attitude evolves as the Biden administration takes power in 2021.