Zuckerberg defends handling of misinformation in political ads

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday defended his company’s controversial decision of allowing politicians to post political ads with misleading or false claims on its platform, saying it’s “something we have to live with.”

“People worry, and I worry deeply, too, about an erosion of truth,” Zuckerberg told The Washington Post ahead of a speech at Georgetown University. “At the same time, I don’t think people want to live in a world where you can only say things that tech companies decide are 100 percent true. And I think that those tensions are something we have to live with.

“In general, in a democracy, I think that people should be able to hear for themselves what politicians are saying,” Zuckerberg continued. “Often, the people who call the most for us to remove content are often the first to complain when its their content that falls on the wrong side of a policy.”

In the 35-minute speech at Georgetown Thursday afternoon, Zuckerberg elaborated on that defense, saying that having tech company’s moderate content could be dangerous.

“Political ads on Facebook are more transparent than anywhere else,” Zuckerberg said. “We don’t factcheck political ads… because we believe people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.

“I know many people disagree, but in general I don’t think it’s right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy. And we are not an outlier here.”

Mark Zuckerberg hit China’s model for the internet in a speech Thursday, saying that Facebook could not operate there without compromising its values.

“I wanted our services in China because I believe in connecting the whole world, and I thought maybe we could help creating a more open society,” Zuckerberg during a speech at Georgetown University.

“I worked hard on this for a long time, but we could never come to agreement on what it would take for us to operate there and they never let us in.”

Zuckerberg spent a large portion of Thursday’s appearance defending Facebook as a vehicle for freedom of expression and expanding free speech.

He contrasted that view with China’s model, which he said has been stifling mentions of protests on Chinese apps.

He specifically mentioned TikTok, a video sharing platform whose parent company ByteDance reportedly released guidelines recently effectively banning criticism of the Chinese government.

“Until recently, the internet in almost every country outside China has been defined by American platforms with strong free expression values,” he said. “But there’s no guarantee that these values will win out. A decade ago, almost all of the major internet platforms were American. Today, six of the top ten are Chinese.”