Facebook, already under scrutiny for recently censoring a New York Post expose about Hunter Biden's alleged shady dealings in Ukraine and China, will tighten its rules on content concerning the U.S. presidential election in November, reports The Wall Street Journal.
The measures, which will include slowing the spread of viral content, tweaking users' news feeds to change the type of content they see, and lowering the thresholds for detecting the types of content Facebook's software views as dangerous, are being implemented in an attempt to calm election-related conflict, says Facebook spokesman Andy Stone.
"We've spent years building for safer, more secure elections," he told the Journal. "We've applied lessons from previous elections, hired experts, and built new teams with experience across different areas to prepare for various scenarios."
Facebook in mid-October suppressed the Post's story on Hunter Biden, expressing concern about the credibility of the emails and the source behind the story, Rudy Giuliani.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month told Axios his company needed to be "doing everything that we can to reduce the chances of violence or civil unrest in the wake of this election.
Nick Clegg, Facebook's global head of communications and policy, told USA Today that the company created "break-glass tools" in the event of a crisis, but declined to discuss them "because it will no doubt elicit greater sense of anxiety than we hope will be warranted."
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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