Facebook chief rules out banning political adverts

Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg has said he does not think it is right for a company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy.

He was giving a speech in Washington DC following weeks of criticism over the firm’s decision not to ban political adverts that contain falsehoods.

He added he had considered barring all political ads on his platforms.

But he said he believed the move would favour incumbent politicians and whoever the media chose to cover.

And Mr Zuckerberg sad that even if he had supported the idea, it was not clear where his firm would draw the line.

Instead, he said, he had decided the company should “err on the side of greater expression”.

“We don’t fact check political ads, and we don’t do this to help politicians, but because we think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying,” he said.

The speech was delivered at Georgetown University in Washington DC, after which the audience was invited to ask questions. However the question-and-answer section was not broadcast on a livestream provided to the public.

During his talk, Mr Zuckerberg also took the opportunity to make a dig at Chinese rival TikTok, which he said was censoring news of political protests.

And he suggested that his thwarted attempts to bring Facebook and Instagram to mainland China had worked out for the best.

“I wanted our services in China because I believe in connecting the whole world and I thought maybe we can help create a more open society,” he explained.

“But we could never come to agreement on what it would take for us to operate there there, and they never let us in.

“And now, we have more freedom to speak out and stand up for the values that we believe in and fight for free expression around the world.”

Misleading ads

The event came three days after it emerged that since July, the Facebook chief executive had hosted private dinners at several of his homes to which he had invited conservative journalists, commentators and at least one Republican politician. These social events followed claims that the firm had shown bias against the right.

Facebook has also recently been attacked on the left, by two of the leading candidates in the contest to be the Democratic Party’s candidate for the 2020 presidential election.

Last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren paid to run an intentionally misleading advert on its platform that claimed Mark Zuckerberg had personally endorsed Donald Trump for re-election.

She said she had done so in protest against the firm’s decision to allow politicians to run ads containing” known lies”.

“When profit comes up against protecting democracy, Facebook chooses profit,” she claimed.

A spokesman for Joe Biden had previously criticised the firm for refusing to remove a video posted by Donald Trump’s re-election campaign which promoted an unproven conspiracy theory involving the former vice president and his son.

“It is unacceptable for any social media company to knowingly allow deliberately misleading material to corrupt its platform,” Mr Biden’s press secretary said.

‘New tobacco’

Mr Zuckerberg has also faced recent criticism from some of his Silicon Valley peers.

On Wednesday, Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff described Facebook as being the “new cigarettes – it’s addictive, bad for us, and our kids are being drawn in”. He added that he also thought the company should be broken up to prevent it gathering so much data on the public.

“Why they can’t say that trust is our highest value is beyond me,” he added.

Apple’s Tim Cook has also been seen to have repeatedly criticised Facebook over a range of issues including its use of peoples’ personal data and cryptocurrency plans, although he has done so while avoiding mentioning the social media firm by name.