Pascal Oparada
Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg has attacked Twitter for its decision to fact-check President Donald Trump’s tweets.
In an interview with Fox News, Zuckerberg said it is not the place of private companies to regulate what people say online.
According to him, Facebook’s policy on that is different.
“We have a different policy than, I think, Twitter on this, ” he said.
‘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.’”
Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, immediately replied Zuckerberg saying Twitter would continue to call out ‘incorrect or misleading information’ about elections on its platform.
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“Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that’s me. Please leave our employees out of this. We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make,’ he wrote.
“This does not make us an “arbiter of truth.” Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves. More transparency from us is critical so folks can clearly see the why behind our actions, ” Dorsey said.
Twitter had placed a fact-checking label under two of Trump’s tweets urging readers to find out the correct information about elections by post in one of the states.
The labels had linked readers to mainstream media articles on voting as against Trump’s tweets.
Twitter had labelled the tweets with a blue exclamation mark prompting users to ‘get the facts about mail-in ballots’.
Another page on the social media site called Trump’s tweets ‘unsubstantiated,’ according to fact-checkers from CNN, Washington Post and other mainstream news outlets.
This immediately drew the ire of Trump, who threatened to issue some kind of executive order to regulate social media.
Early Wednesday, Trump demanded social media platforms ‘clean up your act’ as he warned his administration will begin to regulate and even shutter such websites after Twitter, for the first time ever, fact-checked his tweets.
Zuckerberg said Trump’s threats don’t strike the right reflexes.
“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, ” Zuckerberg said.
