New York:
Facebook does not intend to lift the suspension on outgoing US President Donald Trump, the platform’s second in command Sheryl Sandberg mentioned Monday.
“Our ban is indefinite. We have said at least through the transition. But we have no plans to lift it,” Facebook’s chief operating officer mentioned at an on the net forum organized by Reuters.
The social network final week suspended Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the aftermath the violent invasion of the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters, which disrupted the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory.
Twitter went a step additional on Friday by deleting Trump’s account, depriving him of his favored megaphone.
Trump also was hit with suspensions from services like Snapchat and Twitch.
“Our policies are applied to everyone,” Sandberg mentioned, noting that the platform has removed posts by the president’s son and “other world leaders.”
“This shows that even a president is not above the policies we have.”
In announcing the suspension final week, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg mentioned Trump applied the platform to incite violent and was concerned he would continue to do so.
Zuckerberg in late October warned about the prospective for social unrest right after the election.
Sandberg admitted that the platform faced some hiccups in the 2016 US presidential election, failing to do sufficient against manipulative campaigns orchestrated from Russia, but she mentioned Facebook had discovered from its errors.
Before the November 3 presidential election, the social network stepped up efforts to combat disinformation campaigns and suspended several accounts, groups and pages with violent or hate-filled content.
Asked about criticism the social media titans exert outsized energy, Sandberg mentioned she was in favor of more regulation and mentioned she hoped to work with the Biden administration, which will take workplace on January 20.
“We are a private company and we have a service we provide and it is our responsibility to make sure that service is not used for things it shouldn’t be used for, like what happened last Wednesday,” she mentioned.
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