Biden’s inauguration: Facebook bans ‘stop the steal’ phrase

"We are now removing content containing the phrase 'stop the steal' under our Coordinating Harm policy from Facebook and Instagram," said Guy Rosen, VP Integrity.

San Francisco: Ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on January 20, Facebook has announced to ban all content with the phrase “stop the steal” on its platforms.

The company had earlier removed the original “Stop the Steal” group in November.

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“We are treating the next two weeks as a major civic event,” Facebook said in a statement late on Monday.

“We are now removing content containing the phrase ‘stop the steal’ under our Coordinating Harm policy from Facebook and Instagram,” said Guy Rosen, VP Integrity.

“We removed the original Stop the Steal group in November and have continued to remove Pages, groups and events that violate any of our policies, including calls for violence,” added Monika Bickert, VP Global Policy at Facebook.

The company is taking additional steps after the Capital Chaos by pro-Trump supporters.

“It may take some time to scale up our enforcement of this new step but we have already removed a significant number of posts”.

Facebook said it will keep its Integrity Operations Center operating at least through January 22 to monitor and respond to threats in real time.

In addition to the indefinite suspension of President Trump’s account, Facebook said it is keeping its pause in place on all ads in the US about politics or elections.

“This means that we aren’t allowing any ads from politicians, including President Trump”.

“After the inauguration, our label on posts that attempt to delegitimise the election results will reflect that Joe Biden is the sitting president,” the social network said.

During inauguration week, the company will add a news digest to Facebook News as a curated place for people to find reliable news about the inauguration.

This will include live video of the inauguration at the US Capitol on January 20.