Facebook reminds employees: You can't fact check Trump now that he's running for president

On Tuesday night, former president Donald Trump held a rally which officially ended all the speculation about his future political aspirations. Trump announced he was indeed running for president again, essentially kicking off his 2024 campaign. There was some chatter that Trump was announcing his presidential run now in order to avoid a Department of Justice criminal probe. The rumor has since been shot down by the DOJ. But there is at least one perk that Trump can take advantage of now:Facebook’s parent company Meta now considers him to be a political candidate, and according to Facebook policy, politicians are not fact-checked on the platform. The former president — the same one who spends his days continuing to perpetuate falsehoods about the 2020 election being stolen from him and sharing posts from QAnon conspiracy theorists on his social media platform Truth Social — is now immune to Facebook’s fact-checkers.CNN obtained an internal memo from Meta that was sent hours before Trump’s announcement on Tuesday in which the social media company reminded employees of the rule. The memo reiterated that “political speech is ineligible for fact-checking” and encompasses not just what a politician says but also photos, videos, and other content created
Read More