Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has admitted it was “dismissive” to say misinformation posted on the social media platform didn’t influence the US presidential election, while also denying the platform operated against US President Donald Trump’s interests.
In response to Trump’s recent tweet that Facebook is “anti-Trump”, which references Facebook’s decision to share with investigators information regarding over 3,000 divisive political ads allegedly bought by Russian actors, Zuckerberg says he “regrets” initially downplaying the issue.
Facebook was always anti-Trump.The Networks were always anti-Trump hence,Fake News, @nytimes(apologized) & @WaPo were anti-Trump. Collusion?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2017
“After the election, I made a comment that I thought the idea misinformation on Facebook changed the outcome of the election was a crazy idea,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.
“Calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it. This is too important an issue to be dismissive.”
While Zuckerberg publicly recognised that Facebook may well have influenced the election, he also defended the social media monolith’s integrity.
“Trump says Facebook is against him. Liberals say we helped Trump,” Zuckerberg said.
“Both sides are upset about ideas and content they don’t like. That’s what running a platform for all ideas looks like.”
The statements from Trump and Zuckerberg come after reports Facebook is preparing to share information on a huge number of advertisements, which were allegedly paid for by Russian interests with the express purpose of encouraging divisions within America’s voting populace.
An explosive Washington Post report yesterday detailed how investigators in the US House and Senate intelligence committees, who are looking into claims of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, believe the ads were intended to disrupt the election in Trump’s favour.
Democrat Representative Adam Schiff, of the House Intelligence Committee, said “I think the American people should see a representative sample of these ads to see how cynical the Russians were using these ads to sow division within our society”.
Closing out his post, Zuckerberg said “we will do our part to defend against nation states attempting to spread misinformation and subvert elections.”
So, there it is. Facebook is now a de facto arbiter of electoral freedom. Bloody hell.
Read Zuckerberg’s full post here:
