While Facebook banned former US president Donald Trump after the January 6 US insurrection, a study by US nonprofit newsroom The Markup found that it took a lot for a Trump post to be labeled false by the platform.

“Trump’s False Posts Were Treated with Kid Gloves by Facebook,” its headline went.

According to data gathered from 2,200 Facebook users volunteering in the newsroom’s Citizen Browser project, labels that could have immediately informed someone that a post is false or misleading were unevenly applied.

“Posts were rarely called “false,” even when they contained debunked conspiracy theories. And posts by Donald Trump were treated with the less direct flags, even when they contained lies,” The Markup reported.

The study examined how often users saw flagged posts on the platform in December 2020 and January 2021 – tumultuous months in Trump’s waning presidency in which he baselessly cried foul over his then-rival Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential elections.

The data showed 330 users out of the 2,200 saw posts that had labels indicating that a post is false, devoid of context, or related to a controversial issue like the presidential election, but the “false” label was only seen a total of 12 times. In contrast, a more general “Election results” label along with a link to accurate figures from the election was spotted 588 times.

Trump was also found to have been the top spreader of the posts that were flagged. But as the report noted, his posts “were never called ‘false’ or ‘misleading’ even when they contained inflammatory lies.”

One such post shared by the former president in mid-December claimed it was “statistically impossible” for Joe Biden to have won. Yet Facebook only noted in the post that the United States “has laws, procedures and established institutions to ensure the integrity of our elections” instead of an outright condemnation of a lie.

“My guess would be that Facebook doesn’t fact-check Donald Trump not because of a concern for free speech or democracy, but because of a concern for their bottom line,” Ethan Porter, an assistant professor at George Washington University who has researched false information on the platform, told The Markup.

“They’ve chosen not to aggressively fact-check. As a result, more people believe false things than would otherwise, full stop,” Porter added.

Despite the findings, The Markup notes its sample size is small relative to the entire Facebook userbase: “The company says it removes at least some outright false posts, and our analysis can’t account for how many false posts our panel would have seen without that action. Our sample is also small relative to Facebook’s universe of billions of users who may have seen additional flags on their feeds.”

The Facebook Oversight Board will be reviewing whether to reinstate Trump’s account. A decision is expected within 90 days since the board accepted the case on January 21. – Rappler.com