Facebook on Tuesday warned users that from October 1, it will be able to remove or block any content that carries legal or regulatory risks for the company. To do this, the content does not have to be illegal, notes Bloomberg.

The immediate reason for the new rules was a pending law in Australia that would require social media companies to pay media companies for their articles. The rules would allow Facebook to block companies and users from publishing news, and thereby eliminate the need for payments.

“This is a last resort. But this is the only way to defend against an approach that is devoid of any logic and that in the long term will only reduce, not support, the viability of Australian media,” said Will Easton, managing director of Facebook for Australia and New Zealand.

Facebook policy changes contradict public statements by CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the importance of freedom of speech, Bloomberg notes. Back in February 2020, Zuckerberg promised at the Silicon Slopes summit in Utah that the company would uphold the right of users to freely express their thoughts and provide data encryption, although this would “piss off a lot of people.” The head of Facebook also criticized calls for the social network to "censor a huge amount of things." “We will continue to remove really harmful content, but we still need to stick to our principles,” he said.
The issue of content regulation on Facebook has escalated again amid the spread of disinformation during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as ahead of the November US presidential election.

Facebook decided to block any content due to legal risks