In an interview with Fox News anchor Dana Perino, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg rebuked Twitter for its decision to tag two of President Donald Trump’s tweets about mail-in voting with fact-check links, saying that private companies “shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth.”
His comments referred to the first Trump tweet that was marked by Jack Dorsey’s ‘integrity’ team, led by the man who thinks people on the right are Nazis.
Zuckerberg was roundly mocked and insulted on Twitter for his comment, but he stuck to it.
“Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,” Zuckerberg said.
DOESN’T VIOLATE THE RULES
On Friday, when Twitter hit Trump’s tweet a third time, Mr. Zuckerberg said a post by President Donald Trump in which he says “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” does not violate the company’s policies and will remain online.
“I disagree strongly with how the President spoke about this, but I believe people should be able to see this for themselves because ultimately accountability for those in positions of power can only happen when their speech is scrutinized out in the open,” Zuckerberg said.
He doesn’t understand what the President meant. The President was simply saying that looting leads to shooting, and it does.
Facebook decided to leave the post up because the company’s position is that it “should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause an imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies,” Zuckerberg wrote.
“Personally, I have a visceral negative reaction to this kind of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric,” Zuckerberg said in his post. “But I’m responsible for reacting not just in my personal capacity but as the leader of an institution committed to free expression.”
Maybe if he understood what the President was saying, he wouldn’t have had such a visceral reaction.
It’s odd that he’s taking this stand since his fact-checkers are brutal, very hard on the right. At least he’s leaving the President’s comments up.
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