Facebook removes anti-lockdown protests’ event listings

As the social-distancing situation continues and lockdowns are in place in a lot of countries, tech giants continue to try to help governments with the crisis. Now, Facebook is taking another measure - BBC News reports that it is going to ban event listings on its platform that violate social-distancing policies in the US.

The social media platform effectively removed event listings for anti-lockdown protests in California, New Jersey and Nebraska. Reportedly, Facebook removed those events after confirming with local governments that they were violating the prevention policies against the spread of the coronavirus. A company spokesperson stated that unauthorized by the government events will not be allowed on Facebook.

Additionally, the tech giant is consulting government representatives from New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in regards to similar situations and whether some event listings should be removed from the platform.

That’s the latest of Facebook’s efforts on controlling the social media situation with the coronavirus pandemic. The platform experienced a lot of false news related issues and thus enforced a stricter policy on content on the platform, as well as started to remove groups that incited violence related to the 5G-coronavirus conspiracy theory. Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, stated that Facebook will do what it could to protect public health and free speech.