Is Facebook removing Share button on pro-Trump content? Fact Check

ByCraig Haley

A message is spreading across Facebook that claims the social media network is removing the Share button on pro-Trump content.

The message below claims that this is a way of killing free speech.

WARNING
Facebook is removing the SHARE button from Pro-Trump posts.
This is how Democrats kill Free Speech
Tell Facebook this is not acceptable in a FREE Society!!!

Despite the claims in the message, there is no evidence that we can see that supports the assertion that pro-Trump posts are being censored in this way.

The message is circulating amid claims that Facebook has been censoring conservative content on their platform. The issue was raised shortly before this message began spreading when Senator Ted Cruz accused Mark Zuckerberg of censoring conservative content on the site when the Facebook CEO was questioned by members of Congress during an open session in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica data leak.

The rumour may very well have been started by confusion over privacy settings. Some posts on Facebook cannot be shared. These could have been either posts created by friends with the friends only privacy applied, or posts made in Facebook Groups with either the Closed or Secret type applied.

Since such post’s privacy settings indicate that they are not intended for public consumption, they will not have a Share option.


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It is possible that someone encountered a pro-Trump post that was posted, for example, in a Closed Group and assumed that Facebook had removed the Share option because of the nature of the post, not the nature of its privacy settings.

Point of note – Facebook never used to remove the Share option from posts made by friends, even if they were friends only. However, if you did click share on such posts, they were never really shared beyond those who could have already seen the post in the first place (for example, the friend that posted it, or mutual friends.) However Facebook possibly decided this was confusing and simply removed the Share button altogether. We discussed this in more detail in our post here.

Either way, one can simply go on to any pro-Trump page (which are always public) or Open group and see for themselves that content on these pages and groups have the Share button.

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