Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asserted Wednesday antitrust investigations against the company were not among the topics he discussed with President Trump during a private meeting last month.
The Facebook chief, who founded the social media giant in 2004, on Wednesday was pressed during testimony before the House Financial Services Committee about his private meeting with the president and whether the investigations were talked about.
“Those subjects didn’t come up,” Zuckerberg said, “but in general I don’t feel like it’s appropriate for me to comment in too much detail on private conversations.”
The Facebook CEO said the meeting was “private overall.”
Zuckerberg and Trump met at the White House last month after Zuckerberg made the rounds on Capitol Hill to meet with lawmakers.
Nice meeting with Mark Zuckerberg of @Facebook in the Oval Office today. https://t.co/k5ofQREfOc pic.twitter.com/jNt93F2BsG
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2019
The president has accused Facebook of censoring conservative viewpoints and harboring a bias against Republicans, and, in May, the White House launched a tool for Facebook and Twitter users to report instances of political bias.
Facebook is the target of an antitrust investigation from attorneys general in 47 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam, and is likely part of a sweeping antitrust investigation from the Justice Department into “market-leading online platforms.”
Zuckerberg appeared before the House Financial Services Committee to discuss its cryptocurrency project, Libra, and discrimination on its advertising platforms. But lawmakers on the panel pilloried the Facebook chief on a host of issues, including workplace conditions for its content moderators, its new policy not to fact-check political ads, and efforts to combat foreign interference in future elections.
Zuckerberg’s testimony before the panel marked the first time he fielded questions from Congress since April 2018.
