by Eric Lendrum
In an interview with Fox News’ Dana Perino, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that he believes private social media companies should not censor politicians.
As CNN reports, the tech giant and billionaire said that “in a democracy I don’t think that we want private companies censoring politicians in the news.” He further explained that “people should decide what is credible, what they want to believe and who they want to vote for.”
His statements are in response to recent calls for Big Tech to censor conservative media figures and politicians. Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) openly called on Twitter during the last Democratic debate to ban President Donald Trump’s account. Although Twitter did change its rules regarding how regular users interact with the tweets of world leaders, it declined to ban President Trump outright.
In addition to Twitter, Facebook has also been facing heat from presidential candidates. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has been steadily rising into first place in most polls for the Democratic nomination, has vowed to break up Big Tech and has criticized Facebook in particular for being culpable in the spread of disinformation during the campaign.
Zuckerberg has since privately expressed concerns about what would happen to Facebook if Warren became president. A recording of an internal meeting of Facebook staff was recently leaked, in which Zuckerberg said that a Warren presidency would “suck” for the company.
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Eric Lendrum graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was the Secretary of the College Republicans and the founding chairman of the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter. He has interned for Young America’s Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, and the White House, and has worked for numerous campaigns including the 2018 re-election of Congressman Devin Nunes (CA-22).
Photo “Mark Zuckerberg” by Anthony Quintano. CC BY 2.0.
