Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg Defends Policy on Political Speech
May 28 2020 - 8:49AM
Dow Jones News
By Dave Sebastian
Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg backed his stance
of largely not interfering with politicians' posts on the company's
platform as President Trump is expected to sign an executive order
that would make it easier for regulators to hold social-media
companies liable for curbing users' speech.
"I don't think Facebook or internet platforms in general should
be arbiters of truth," Mr. Zuckerberg said in a CNBC interview
aired Thursday. "I think that's kind of a dangerous line to get to
in terms of deciding what is true and what isn't."
The order would seek to limit the broad legal protection that
federal law currently provides social-media companies and other
online platforms, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Facebook's policy is to not fact-check speech or advertising by
politicians, though it uses third-party fact checkers to identify
potentially false stories. Mr. Zuckerberg has been battling a
chorus of critics for misinformation, privacy violations and more.
He has defended the policy as a commitment to free expression.
Mr. Zuckerberg said the company will take down content that is
perceived to be harmful, such as that advocating for a cure to a
disease that hasn't been proven. Facebook took down in late March a
post by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro that said
hydroxychloroquine, an antimalaria drug, was an effective treatment
for Covid-19.
But Mr. Zuckerberg also reiterated that the company isn't in the
business of determining what is true or false.
"In general, you want to give as wide of a voice as possible,
and I think you want to have a special deference to political
speech," he said.
Twitter Inc.'s move earlier this week to apply for the first
time fact-checking notices to two tweets from Mr. Trump drew the
ire of the president. "Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH,
and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!" he wrote in a
tweet. The president had tweeted about the potential for fraud
involving mail-in ballots.
"This does not make us an 'arbiter of truth,'" Twitter CEO Jack
Dorsey said in a tweet on Wednesday, referring to the company's
move to apply the fact-checking label to Mr. Trump's content. "Our
intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show
the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves."
Current federal legal protections for social-media companies
were adopted by Congress in Section 230 of the 1996 Communications
Decency Act. The law gives online companies broad immunity from
liability for their users' actions, as well as wide latitude to
police content on their sites.
Write to Dave Sebastian at dave.sebastian@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 28, 2020 08:34 ET (12:34 GMT)
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