Zuckerberg says Facebook won't be 'arbiters of truth' after Trump threat
Source: The Guardian
Zuckerberg says Facebook won't be 'arbiters of truth' after Trump threat
President announced plan to strip social media companies of liability protections after Twitter factchecked his tweets
Tom McCarthy in New York
@TeeMcSee
Thu 28 May 2020 16.28 BST
Last modified on Thu 28 May 2020 17.19 BST
Two years after admitting under political pressure that Facebook must do more to prevent disinformation campaigns on its platform, founder Mark Zuckerberg told Fox News on Thursday that the company should step away from regulating online speech.
Zuckerberg’s remarks seemed designed to ingratiate his company to the White House, as Donald Trump escalated a war with rival social media platform Twitter over that company’s efforts to begin factchecking some of Trump’s posts.
“I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,” Zuckerberg told Fox News. “Private companies probably shouldn’t be, especially these platform companies, shouldn’t be in the position of doing that.”
Twitter slapped a factcheck link on two Trump tweets this week in which the president spread lies about the integrity of mail-in voting. Trump accused Twitter of censorship – in a tweet – and has announced plans to issue an executive order that could strip social media companies of protections against liability for user content.
In his Fox News interview, Zuckerberg appeared to move to head off the possibility. Since its platform was hijacked by foreign propaganda campaigns and harvested for private data by malicious actors during the 2016 election season, the company has stepped up government lobbying campaigns in Washington, Britain and worldwide.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/28/zuckerberg-facebook-police-online-speech-trump
= new reply since forum marked as read
