Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg met US President Donald Trump and members of Congress on September 20 where he refused to break up the entities of the world's biggest social media network. Zuckerberg’s meeting was a part of a political reconnaissance mission to Washington. Amid various controversies regarding digital privacy, censorship and transparency in political advertising, Zuckerberg’s visit was aimed at calming down the atmosphere. A Facebook spokesman said that the discussions were focusing in part on future internet regulation.

Read: Senator Hawley Challenges Zuckerberg: Sell Whatsapp, Instagram

Republican call for break up

US Senator from Missouri and Republican Josh Hawley said that he had a ‘frank’ conversation with Zuckerberg. "Challenged him to do two things to show FB is serious about bias, privacy & competition. 1) Sell WhatsApp & Instagram 2) Submit to independent, third-party audit on censorship. He said no to both," tweeted Hawley. While Trump shared an image of him shaking hands with Zuckerberg, he didn’t divulge any details about the minutes of the meeting. "Nice meeting with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook in the Oval Office today," wrote the US President.

Read: Facebook Redefines 'terrorist Organisations' To Prevent Extremism

Democrats not on the same page

Facebook, Inc. currently owns messaging app WhatsApp and photo, video-sharing social networking service Instagram, which makes the company a social media giant. While Hawley called for Facebook’s dismantlement, Democrat Senator Mark Warner said he was not prepared to call for it. "I'm not yet with some of my friends who want to go straight to break up," Warner told an American business news channel. "I am concerned. These are global companies, and I don't want to transfer the leadership to Chinese companies," he added.

Read: Facebook Auto-generating Pages For Islamic State, Al-Qaida

Facebook's 'Supreme Court'

Earlier, Facebook had unveiled its blueprint for an independent oversight board, where people can appeal to review the company’s content decisions. Facebook gave details on the structure of the oversight board and its relationship to Facebook in the form of a charter. “We are responsible for enforcing our policies every day and we make millions of content decisions every week. But ultimately I don't believe private companies like ours should be making so many important decisions about speech on our own. That's why I've called for governments to set clearer standards around harmful content. It's also why we're now giving people a way to appeal our content decisions by establishing the independent Oversight Board,” said Zuckerberg in a Facebook post.

Read: Facebook To Set Up 'Supreme Court' To Review Its Content Decisions