Facebook has been making headlines recently for its political advertisement policy that makes it easy for politicians to lie on its platform. The company has been greeted with backlash and accused of amplifying disinformation, hate speech, and violent content. Facebook’s refusal to police political speech makes way for lies and false information to appear.
In an earnings call on Wednesday, Mr. Zuckerberg heavily leaned on free speech to defend Facebook’s failure to fact check political ads whilst continuously downplaying its financial role in political advertising. According to Factset, Facebook is estimated to bring in $84 billion in revenue, half of that 1% is $420 million. Mr. Zuckerberg is aware of his power and the financial benefit that comes with false advertisement, money is an obvious factor in this equation.
Recently, Senator Elizabeth Warren accused Facebook of being a “disinformation for-profit machine” And then carried the beef onto a different social platform by tweeting “Facebook is actively helping Trump spread lies and misinformation.” on Thursday.
Now that Facebook has announced the launch of Facebook News, it can become even more complicated since not all news stories will be fact-checked. Facebook News will offer stories from a number of trusted major publications, such as The New York Times and the Washington Post. Although some stories will be chosen by professional journalists, others will be chosen by a Facebook algorithm that is tailored to peoples’ interests over time.
His explicit denial in political interference poses a threat to the general public by allowing disinformation to spread like wildfire. Using the constitution as a forlorn excuse, he is sugar-coating his true intentions.
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