🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
In an advance clip of an interview set to air Friday on Fox News, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he would not censor social media posts from politicians, including President Donald Trump.
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, meanwhile, condemned Facebook and Zuckerberg for earlier remarks via Twitter. It's the latest in a string of criticisms the senator has leveled against the company.
"Facebook is actively helping Trump spread lies and misinformation," Warren wrote. "Facebook already helped elect Donald Trump once. They might do it again—and profit off of it."
It appeared Warren was specifically responding to an earlier speech Zuckerberg gave on Thursday at Georgetown University about free speech. During that speech, Zuckerberg said he didn't "think most people want to live in a world where you can only post things that tech companies judge to be 100 percent true."
Facebook had a policy that didn't permit misinformation in any ads. Facebook built relationships with independent fact-checkers, so they weren't the sole deciders of what was or wasn't a lie. But Facebook undermined those relationships and excluded political ads from that policy.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 18, 2019
According to a portion of the interview with Fox News host Dana Perino posted on Thursday, Zuckerberg reiterated similar themes, saying the company had no plans to censor Trump or politicians in general.
"My belief is that in a democracy, I don't think that we want private companies censoring politicians in the news," Zuckerberg said. "I generally believe that as a principle, people should decide what is credible and what they want to believe, who they want to vote for. And I don't think that should be something that we want tech companies or any kind of company doing."
Warren has previously sparred with Facebook and Zuckerberg, tweeting on Saturday that her team had intentionally made a political advertisement with false claims to see how quickly Facebook would run it.
Facebook changed their ads policy to allow politicians to run ads with known lies—explicitly turning the platform into a disinformation-for-profit machine. This week, we decided to see just how far it goes.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 12, 2019
Warren has also spoken about breaking up Silicon Valley technology companies, saying the companies held too much power and tweeting with the hashtag "#BreakUpBigTech."
Giant tech companies have too much power. My plan to #BreakUpBigTech prevents corporations like Amazon from knocking out the rest of the competition. You can be an umpire, or you can be a player—but you can’t be both. #WarrenTownHall pic.twitter.com/73y1002QVv
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) April 23, 2019
Mark Zuckerberg's speech today shows how little he learned from 2016, and how unprepared Facebook is to handle the 2020 election. https://t.co/2JHCuihexR
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 18, 2019
Warren also said on Twitter Thursday night that Facebook was "unprepared" for the 2020 election.
Zuckerberg, meanwhile, previously threatened legal action if Warren were elected president in leaked comments. "At the end of the day," Zuckerberg said, according to Politico, "if someone's going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight."
Zuckerberg later backed off his comments slightly.
"Maybe I said that in a little bit more unfiltered of a way than I would say it externally," Zuckerberg said, "but fundamentally we believe everything we said that was in there."
Zuckerberg said he still planned on treating Warren fairly.
"Even when people disagree with what I think would be good to happen in the world, I still want to give them a voice," Zuckerberg said. "That's what we're here to do."
Warren's campaign did not immediately respond to Newsweek's request for comment on Thursday night.
