Facebook CEO defended free speech without taking reporters' questions

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday defended free speech while addressing students at Georgetown University. But while he was doing that, limitations placed on coverage of his remarks. Reporters were not allowed to ask questions - only students were given that chance, filtered by a moderator. Even worse, Facebook and Georgetown barred news organisations from filming and instead, organizers provided a livestream on Georgetown’s social media site and made available video shot by Facebook.

“It’s quite ironic,” said Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute and a former state prosecutor. More generally, she said of Facebook, “The key to free expression is to not have one company control the flow of speech to more than 2 billion people, using algorithms that amplify disinformation in order to maximize profits.”

'A joke'

John Stanton, a former fellow at Georgetown who heads a group called the “Save Journalism Project,” called the CEO’s appearance “a joke.” Zuckerberg “is the antithesis of free expression,” Stanton said in a statement. “He’s thrown free speech, public education and democracy to the wayside in his thirst for power and profit.” Facebook with nearly 2.5 billion users worldwide is under heavy scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators following a series of data privacy scandals, including lapses in opening the personal data of millions of users to Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Facebook has drawn accusations from President Donald Trump and his allies that the platform is steeped in anti-conservative bias. Zuckerberg recently fell into a tiff with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a leading Democratic presidential candidate, who ran a fake political ad on Facebook taking aim at the CEO. Warren has proposed breaking up big tech companies. With the phoney ad, she was protesting Facebook’s policy of not fact-checking politicians’ speech or ads in the same way it enlists outside parties to fact-check news stories and other posts.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defends free speech

“We think people should be able to see for themselves,” Zuckerberg responded Thursday on the fact-checking issue. “If content is newsworthy, we don’t take it down even if it goes against our standards.”

Facebook also declined requests that it remove a misleading video ad from Trump’s re-election campaign targeting Democrat Joe Biden. A spokesman for Biden said Zuckerberg’s speech was an effort “to cloak Facebook’s policy in a feigned concern for free expression.”

“Facebook has chosen to sell Americans’ personal data to politicians looking to target them with disproven lies and conspiracy theories, crowding out the voices of working Americans,” campaign spokesman Bill Russo said in a statement.

Several of the students’ questions to Zuckerberg at Georgetown pointed up the conflict. One asked, if Facebook supports free speech, “why is conservative content disproportionately censored?” But another asserted that the policy of not fact-checking political ads is pro-conservative.

“I think it would be hard to be biased against both sides,” Zuckerberg replied, smiling.

Asked about the handling of questions, Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhjara said, “They were submitted by students as they walked into the room. And they’re being picked at random by Georgetown.”

(With AP inputs)