Senator and possible next vice presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren took aim at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg after his interview with Fox News aired on Thursday.
The Facebook founder came out in support of free speech on all social media platforms after the controversy sparked in light of Twitter’s decision to fact-check President Donald Trump’s tweets, which caused serious blowback from the White House.
“I don’t think that Facebook or internet platforms, in general, should be arbiters of truth,” Zuckerberg told Fox News’ Dana Perino.
“Political speech is one of the most sensitive parts in a democracy, and people should be able to see what politicians say.”
Despite Zuckerberg’s seeming support of politicians’ right to distribute their opinions on social media, Warren took exception to the CEO’s comments. The Massachusetts senator lashed out in a tweet of her own , saying that Zuckerberg supported allowing “politicians to lie without consequences.”
In addition to taking a swipe at the social media creator for appearing on Fox News, calling it a “hate-for-profit machine that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracy theorists,” Warren also put a large portion of the blame for political issues on the 36-year-old Californian, saying that decisions like his are “eroding our democracy.”
In his interview, Zuckerberg also addressed the corresponding issue of the government putting a muzzle on the platforms.
“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.”
The Facebook chief defended his position, saying he felt it would be inconsistent to build a company based on giving people a voice and proceed to censor them if that voice was unacceptable to you.
Trump and other government officials have used Twitter specifically to set the record straight on issues they felt were being misreported, or weren’t being given the attention they deserved.
The recent feud between the president and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey came into being after the platform fact-checked the president’s comments about the potential for voter fraud if mail-in ballots were used in the upcoming 2020 presidential election.
Zuckerberg’s interview aired in light of the president saying on Thursday that he would likely shut down Twitter if he were legally able, but he didn’t see the precedent, as The Inquisitr previously reported. Trump also signed a controversial executive order concerning what he indicated he believed to be an all too powerful monopoly held by social media in the United States.
