Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Called Out Twitter For Fact Checking Donald Trump
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg came out against his competitor’s site and said he disagreed with Twitter’s decision to fact check President Donald Trump’s tweets.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has been in the midst of a firestorm ever since his platform fact-checked the president’s recent tweets, causing a backlash from both everyday users and the president himself. The New York Post reported that Zuckerberg touched on the issue during an excerpt from a Fox News interview scheduled to air on Thursday.
The Facebook founder said in the clip that a big part of his rationale behind the more lenient tendency was founded in his belief that platforms such as the one he started aren’t in charge of truth.
“We have a different policy, I think, than Twitter on this. I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online.
“In general, private companies probably shouldn’t be, especially these platform companies, shouldn’t be in the position of doing that.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reacts to the news that President Trump says he will take action against Big Tech. pic.twitter.com/NxRa96gZBb
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 28, 2020
Dorsey struck back in his own tweets where he defended Twitter’s position. The company’s chief executive officer said that he believes he has the responsibility to act in the interest of making the content on his platform as informative as possible as The Inquisitr previously reported. Dorsey also asked anyone who didn’t agree with his decision to check out Twitter’s civic integrity policy, asking that they leave his employees out of it.
“Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that’s me …We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally.”
The Twitter CEO seemed to make a pointed reference to Zuckerberg’s comments.
“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,” he said.
Social media’s role in public opinion and elections came into question earlier this week when Twitter decided to place warning labels on two of the president’s tweets.
Trump has continuously used Twitter as his way of instantaneously communicating with Americans. While his tweets have been blamed for a lot of turmoil in the political world, it’s been said that they have also brought attention to issues that would likely not have been widely reported.
Trump’s offending tweets that merited the platform’s warning concerned mail-in ballots, which have been proposed for the upcoming election.
The president has since responded in kind to the micro-blogging platform, floating ideas of how to keep what he has identified as censorship from ruling social media and saying that Twitter’s actions proved his concerns are valid.
