Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez targeted Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg for disagreeing with Twitter fact-checking Donald Trump, saying social media platforms are not “the arbiter of truth.”
House Speaker Pelosi slammed Zuckerberg’s disagreement with Twitter over fact-checking a tweet from the president linking mail-in voting to fraud as a “disgrace” in a Thursday press conference and accused the Facebook founder of “catering” to the current administration out of fear.
“As far as the platforms are concerned, they want two things from the federal government, no regulation and no taxes,” she said. “So they cater to the Trump administration all the time. I think Mark Zuckerberg’s statement was a disgrace.”
New York Congresswoman Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez not surprisingly took things a step further, claiming Facebook relies on “white supremacists and disinformation peddlers” to be “successful.”
“[Zuckerberg] is worried that Facebook’s PR operation is falling apart as it’s exposed that their platform relies on white supremacists & disinformation peddlers to be successful,” she tweeted.
Zuckerberg is not worried about being bullied by Trump.He is worried that Facebook’s PR operation is falling apart as it’s exposed that their platform relies on white supremacists & disinformation peddlers to be successful.They aren’t ignoring them. They’re protecting them. https://t.co/DA4Fz6pc5q
In his Wednesday interview, Zuckerberg tried to distance his company from Twitter when asked about the tweet by the president being “fact-checked.”
“We have a different policy than Twitter on this. I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,” he said. “I think in general, private companies probably shouldn’t be — especially these platform companies — shouldn’t be in the position of doing that.”
Despite not seeing Facebook as an “arbiter of truth,” the company has come under fire numerous times for banning users over their speech. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and David Icke have been kicked off the platform, while other conservatives have consistently complained of bias.
The company’s role in policing speech was previously called into question in Capitol Hill hearings where Zuckerberg did not seem to have such stringent views on regulating speech, which the company does to this day. Zuckerberg promised at the time to do more to combat fake news and alleged disinformation campaigns from foreign countries.
President Trump has meanwhile passed an executive order that could alter the legal projections big tech companies have with Section 230, which allows them legal immunity from litigation stemming from liability for what is posted to their sites.
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