Mark Zuckerberg intervened to soften Alex Jones’s ban on Facebook: Report

• Mark Zuckerberg stepped in to make Alex Jones’ 2019 ban more lenient, reports BuzzFeed.
• The ban should extend to posts in support of Jones, but Zuckerberg vetoed that part, the sources said.
• Current and former employees said the company has been deliberately tolerant of right-wing figures.
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Facebook’s ban on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was less strict than officials would have liked it to be, according to a new report by BuzzFeed.

Facebook announced in May 2019 that it was banning a group of right-wing conspiracy theorists, including Jones. Sources told BuzzFeed that Facebook’s strategic response team recommended not only banning Jones, but removing any content that praised or expressed support for his ideas.

But once that recommendation was made to Zuckerberg, he decided on a less comprehensive ban, effectively deviating from company policy, the sources said.

“Zuckerberg basically decided that he didn’t want to use that policy against Jones because he personally didn’t think he was a hateful figure,” a former Facebook policy official told BuzzFeed.

Jones promoted a number of conspiracy theories, including that 9/11 was a government-orchestrated false flag operation. He also said that the shooting at Sandy Hook’s school was a “farce” and that the dead children were actors. The Washington Post reported on Saturday that Jones was among a group of right-wing figures under investigation by the FBI and the Justice Department for possible ties to the Capitol riot on January 6.

Employees who spent time building Facebook policies on hate speech and misinformation found Zuckerberg’s intervention frustrating, BuzzFeed reported.

“This was the first time that I had to create a new category of politics to fit what Zuckerberg wanted. It’s a bit demoralizing when we established a policy and it went through rigorous cycles. Like, what the hell is that for?” A former Facebook policy official said.

Facebook did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment, but a company spokesman told BuzzFeed that “Mark asked for a more nuanced policy and enforcement strategy” in Jones’ decision.

Current officials and former employees said Zuckerberg’s decision set the tone for Facebook’s approach to moderating right-wing personalities. Generally speaking, the BuzzFeed report detailed complaints from current employees and former employees that Facebook allowed right-wing figures to disregard their content moderation policies for fear that if they took action against them, it would make the company a target for accusations of anti-conservative prejudice.

In particular, the report focused on internal concerns that Joel Kaplan, vice president of global public policy at Facebook, had an outsized impact on political decisions and rejected warnings from company experts about the spread of hateful and uninformative content on Facebook.

This is not the first time that employees’ concerns about Kaplan have surfaced. At a company meeting in June, the details of which were obtained by Verge, a question that was voted in favor of employees said: “Many people think Joel Kaplan has a lot of power over our decisions. We can put him in a Q&A to find out more about your role, influence and beliefs? “

Kaplan, who was an adviser to President George W. Bush, also provoked an internal reaction from the company when he publicly appeared at the hearing on Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual conduct in 2018.