The Daily 202: Politicians will no longer get a free pass from Facebook Olivier Knox On this day in 1989, Chinese soldiers and tanks crushed pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, with a death toll Western sources put in the hundreds or thousands. In a move with global ramifications for online political speech, Facebook plans to change a policy under which it generally spares toxic speech by major political figures from content-moderation rules it applies to everyone else. At issue is a rule, first unfurled in October 2016, under which the social media giant tolerates inflammatory and untrue posts from influential people on grounds they’re “newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest even if they might otherwise violate our standards.”
(Bloomberg) Former White House Counsel Donald McGahn is expected to testify behind closed doors next week to a U.S. House committee about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, according to two people familiar with the negotiations.