FACEBOOK RELAXED RULES FOR TRUMP’S BENEFIT, EMPLOYEES CLAIM

Facebook has repeatedly let President Donald Trump's family members and allies off the hook for breaking its policies, the Washington Post reported. 

Current and former Facebook employees said the company held off taking action because it feared accusations of anti-conservative bias, Isobel Asher Hamilton also reported for Business Insider. 

Two company sources told the Post that Facebook removed a strike from Donald Trump Jr's Instagram account, which if upheld could have resulted in penalties. Facebook has been battling allegations of anti-conservative bias from Trump and Republican lawmakers. Facebook went easy on accounts belonging to Donald Trump Jr and another to America First Action, the biggest pro-Trump super Political Action Committee (PAC), they added. 

In one instance towards the end of 2019, the company removed a misinformation strike from Donald Trump Jr's Instagram account, two sources said. The paper did not specify which post was at issue, but if the strike had been upheld, Facebook could have imposed sanctions on the account such as reduced traffic and lower priority in search results. One source said this was one of many strike removals for Trump's family members over the past year. The Post also analyzed the Facebook page of America First Action, and found that although the page violated Facebook's rules on misinformation and had been fact-checked multiple times, traffic had not dipped, as would ordinarily happen for accounts that broke rules.