October 24, 2019

Mark Zuckerberg was under the gun for six hours yesterday over Facebook's new political advertising policy when he came to court regulatory approval from Congress for Facebook's cryptocurrency.

MAXINE WATERS: You announce that Facebook would not be doing fact checking on political ads given any one Facebook labels a politician a platform to lie, mislead, and misinform the American people. Which would also allow Facebook to sell more ads. Your claim to promote freedom of speech does not ring true.

Zuckerberg wasn't too forthcoming.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Would I be able to run advertisements on Facebook targeting Republicans in primaries saying they voted for the Green New Deal?

MARK ZUCKERBERG: I don't know the answer to that off the top of my head.

AOC: So you don't know if I'll be able to do that?

ZUCKERBERG: I think probably.

AOC: Do you see a potential problem here with a complete lack of fact checking on political advertisements?

Zuckerberg said Facebook relies on third party fact checkers.

AOC: So you won't take down lies or you will take down lies? I think that's a simple yes or no.

ZUCKERBERG: Congresswoman --

AOC: I'm not talking about spin. I'm talking about disinformation.

ZUCKERBERG: In a democracy, i think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians that they may or may not vote for --

AOC: So you won't take them down. You may flag that it's wrong, but you won't take it down.

Democrats: You propagate lies
Republicans: Are you going to censor our ads?

You can see where the priorities are.

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