Responding to Twitter’s decision to Twitter attach a fact check to a deceiving tweet from Donald Trump, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested on Fox News that his company won’t fact-check the lying president because private companies “shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth.”
“We have a different policy than, I think, Twitter on this,” Zuckerberg told Fox News host Dana Perino during an interview on “The Daily Briefing” scheduled to air in full on Thursday.
“I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,” he added. “Private companies probably shouldn’t be, especially these platform companies, shouldn’t be in the position of doing that.”
“I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online.”
Facebook often issues “fact-check” notifications on articles and posts when false or partly false information is shared on the platform. They just won’t do it with politicians.
Zuckerberg’s remarks came after Trump threatened social media companies that the federal government could “strongly regulate” or “close them down” if they continue to “silence conservative voices.”
Zuckerberg also said government censorship of social media isn’t ‘right reflex’.
“I have to understand what they actually would intend to do,” Zuckerberg said in response to the president’s warning. “But in general, I think a government choosing to censor a platform because they’re worried about censorship doesn’t exactly strike me as the right reflex there.”
Twitter on Tuesday slapped a fact check notification on one of Trump’s tweets for the first time, cautioning users that despite the president’s claims about mail-in voting, “fact-checkers” say there is “no evidence” that mail-in voting would increase fraud risks and that “experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.
