Former officials, lawmakers urge action on election security

Acclaimed screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, in a New York Times op-ed Thursday, laid into Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg over his company’s refusal to block political ads with incorrect or misleading information.

Sorkin, who in 2010 wrote “The Social Network,” a movie about Facebook’s origin story and Zuckerberg’s rise to fame, hit back at the CEO for criticizing the film’s depiction of him.

“You protested that the film was inaccurate and that Hollywood didn’t understand that some people build things just for the sake of building them,” Sorkin wrote.

“It was hard not to feel the irony while I was reading excerpts from your recent speech at Georgetown University, in which you defended — on free speech grounds — Facebook’s practice of posting demonstrably false ads from political candidates.”

Sorkin wrote that he admired Zuckerberg’s “deep belief in free speech,” but argued that having “crazy lies pumped into the water supply that corrupt the most important decisions we make together” can’t be what the Facebook CEO wants.