Facebook’s guidelines allow users to call for the death of politicians and other public figures

Facebook’s guidelines allow users to call for the death of public figures as part of its policies allowing discussion – including critical commentary of politicians and celebrities – on its platform, according to new reports.

While private, non-public figure individuals cannot be targeted with “calls for death” on the site, leaked documents detail how public figures simply can’t be “purposefully exposed” to such calls, meaning a user could call for the death of a minor local celebrity on Facebook providing they did not tag the target in their message.

Facebook’s internet moderator guidelines, seen by The Guardian, explain how users are permitted to bully dead people, but only those who died before the year 1900, and are allowed to write abusive comments about fictional characters, with moderators told to take no action against the statement: “Homer Simpson is a bitch”.

All politicians are defined as public figures, as is any journalist employed “to write/speak publicly”. “People who are mentioned in the title, subtitle or preview of five or more news articles or media pieces within the last two years” and those with more than 100,000 followers on any given social media platform are considered indicative of a person’s public figure standing.

All people defined as public figures have to be over 18-years old and cannot be in the public eye “involuntarily”, the leaked documents stated.

‘We distinguish between public figures and private individuals because we want to allow discussion, which often includes critical commentary of people who are featured in the news or who have a large public audience’ – Facebook’s publicly available guidelines

“These are public figures ‘who are not true celebrities, and who have not engaged with their fame, UNLESS they have been accused of criminal activity [sic]’, according to the guidelines.

The company maintains a private list of people defined as involuntary public figures that was not disclosed in the leaked documents, but a presence on social media is accepted as proof a person has “engaged with their fame”, The Guardian said.

The social network’s publicly available bullying and harassment policy does not allow direct threats of severe physical harm – e.g. actual death threats – threats to release personal information or derogatory sexualised terms, regardless of whether they are tagged or not.

However, uses of ‘figurative speech’ in criticisms of public figures – for example, calling for someone to “drop dead” – is understood to be allowed. For example: “Boris Johnson should just drop dead or resign already” or “Just die already Bolsonaro, you are not making it any better for your people”, is considered nuanced speech used to express disagreement with a public figure.

While Facebook and other social media platforms have been widely criticised for failing to curb abuse aimed at both public figures and general users, the differences in how abuse is dealt with based on whether a user is considered a public figure or not is unlikely to reassure high-profile social media users.

A Facebook spokesperson said: “We think it’s important to allow critical discussion of politicians and other people in the public eye. But that doesn’t mean we allow people to abuse or harass them on our apps.

“We remove hate speech and threats of serious harm no matter who the target is, and we’re exploring more ways to protect public figures from harassment.

“We regularly consult with safety experts, human rights defenders, journalists and activists to get feedback on our policies and make sure they’re in the right place.”