Social Media Companies Cracking Down on Hate Speech

Facebook and Twitter are stepping up their safety policies in wake of the George Floyd protests. Last week President Trump signed an executive order which would weaken social media companies by allowing them to be more vulnerable to lawsuits. However, this did not stop Twitter from continuing to flag the president’s tweets as potentially misleading and glorifying violence. Now the company has announced they’ve updated their safety policy, prioritizing context over fact checking moving forward. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, was more hesitant to take any action, initially saying he wanted people to decide what is true or false. That was until his employees staged a virtual walkout Monday and he received a ton of backlash online. Now Facebook has announced they’ve fast-tracked their process and shut down pages associated with hate groups, regardless of political affiliation, especially those using their platforms to incite violence.