META Meta Platforms Inc

By Sarah E. Needleman 

Facebook Inc. said it is removing all content mentioning "stop the steal, " a phrase popular among supporters of President Trump's unproven claims of election fraud, as part of a raft of measures to stem misinformation and incitements to violence on its platform ahead of President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration.

The social-media giant said Monday that it would uphold its decision last week to suspend Mr. Trump from posting for at least two weeks, with Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg saying at the time that the risks of the president using Facebook during this period were too great.

The company also said Monday that it would continue to pause all U.S. ads about politics or elections, including those from Mr. Trump.

"With continued attempts to organize events against the outcome of the U.S. presidential election that can lead to violence, and use of the ['stop the steal'] term by those involved in Wednesday's violence in DC, we're taking this additional step in the lead up to the inauguration," Facebook said in a blog post.

"It may take some time to scale up our enforcement of this new step but we have already removed a significant number of posts," the company said.

Facebook is among several prominent technology companies -- including Twitter Inc., Snap Inc., Reddit Inc. and others -- that have taken steps in recent days to silence the president's personal accounts or online communities devoted to him, citing rules prohibiting content that incites violence.

The moves followed the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol Wednesday by a mob of Trump supporters, who stormed the building after the president and his allies urged them to march on it as lawmakers convened inside to certify Mr. Biden's Electoral College victory.

The efforts by the tech companies to try to deter additional unrest continue to grow. Amazon.com Inc. said Monday it is removing some products related to pro-Trump conspiracy QAnon. Separately, Airbnb Inc. said it is expanding safety measures ahead of the inauguration, including banning anyone confirmed to have played a part in the violence at the Capitol last week.

Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google also each removed from their app stores the social-media service Parler, which had been soaring in popularity among conservatives and other right-wing users and is known for its loose rules for posting content.

Amazon's action on QAnon follows the company's decision to end web-hosting services for Parler, which has featured violent rhetoric in connection with last week's pro-Trump riot in Washington, D.C. Amazon said it wasn't confident in Parler's ability to sufficiently police content on its platform that incites violence. Parler sued Amazon on Monday in response. Amazon-owned streaming service Twitch last week banned Mr. Trump indefinitely.

As part of its announcement Monday, Facebook said it would add to its news feed curated stories about the inauguration and show live video of the event when it takes place at the Capitol on January 20. Separately, Facebook said it hired civil-rights attorney Roy Austin as vice president of civil rights and deputy general counsel and that he will establish a new civil-rights organization for the company. Mr. Austin was previously a partner at the law firm Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis LLP specializing in criminal-defense and civil-rights law.

Facebook has taken action against the "stop the steal" movement before, removing a group called "Stop the Steal" in November that the company said had been organizing protests of vote counts around the country. Around that time Facebook also introduced features designed to limit the spread of false and possibly dangerous content, such as one that requires users seeking to share election-related material to click through a notice encouraging them to visit Facebook's voting-information center.

Sebastian Herrera contributed to this article.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 11, 2021 19:02 ET (00:02 GMT)

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