Donald Trump Accuses Facebook of Being 'Anti-Trump'
September 27 2017 - 3:03PM
Dow Jones News
By Georgia Wells
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said Facebook Inc. was
biased against him during the election, marking the second time he
has sought to rebut the notion that possible manipulation of the
social network could have played a role in his election win.
The posts on the president's Twitter account came after Facebook
recently agreed to hand over information related to the election to
congressional investigators.
"Facebook was always anti-Trump," Mr. Trump said in a post on
his Twitter account Wednesday, suggesting that Facebook was taking
part in a media campaign against him. "The Networks were always
anti-Trump hence, Fake News, @nytimes (apologized) & @WaPo were
anti-Trump. Collusion?"
A spokesman for Facebook didn't immediately respond to a request
for comment.
President Trump's tweets come at a time of heightened scrutiny
of Facebook's growing role in politics. Facebook earlier this month
said that Russian entities paid $150,000 to run 5,200 divisive ads
on its platform during the campaign. On Sept. 21, Facebook said it
would hand over detailed information about the Russian-backed ads
to congressional investigators and take steps to increase political
transparency on its site.
The following day, Mr. Trump said in a Twitter post that the
attention investigators were paying to Facebook was part of the
"Russia hoax."
Mr. Trump has expressed skepticism about the intelligence
community's findings that Russia interfered in the U.S. election,
and has called the investigation into Moscow's role and related
issues a "witch hunt." He has denied his campaign colluded with
Russia, and Russia has denied interfering in the election.
Facebook has previously faced criticism for a perception it is
left-leaning. Last May, Facebook faced allegations that its workers
had a liberal bias in how they ranked the social network's popular
topics. Although Facebook said an internal investigation found "no
evidence of systematic political bias," it revamped how the feature
works.
In December 2015, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg ruled
that Mr. Trump's posts should remain on the site, disagreeing with
some employees who argued that some of Mr. Trump's posts should be
removed for violating the site's rules on hate speech.
Mr. Trump's campaign used Facebook to reach voters in a targeted
way. Its ads drew more engagement on Facebook, in the form of
clicks and other signals, than those of Hillary Clinton's camp,
according to people familiar with the internal figures.
The President criticized the company last October, several days
before the election, when he said, in a post on his Twitter
account, that Facebook, Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google
were "burying the FBI criminal investigation" of Mrs. Clinton.
Write to Georgia Wells at Georgia.Wells@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 27, 2017 14:48 ET (18:48 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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