Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged Thursday that content hosted on his platform played a role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said in January that the company was not responsible for the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol despite significant evidence to the contrary.
“Certainly, there was content on our services. From that perspective, there’s further work to do to make our services more effective,” Zuckerberg said in response to a question about the riots during a House hearing Thursday on “Social Media’s Role in Promoting Extremism and Misinformation.”
Democrats and liberals accused Sandberg in January of making false statements and being disingenuous in her denial of Facebook’s role in fomenting violence that led to the Capitol attack. Instead, Sandberg blamed the attack on other social media platforms that “don’t have our abilities to stop hate and don’t have our standards and don’t have our transparency.”
“This is demonstrably false,” Rachel Cohen, communications director for Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, said in January of Sandberg’s claims. Cohen cited news articles with evidence of Facebook allowing its users to organize and incite violence before the Capitol attack.
Earlier during the misinformation hearing on Thursday, Zuckerberg put most of the blame for the Capitol attack on former President Donald Trump.
“We did our part to secure the integrity of the election. And then, on Jan. 6, President Trump gave a speech … calling on people to fight,” said Zuckerberg.
Facebook, along with a number of other social media platforms, banned Trump in January following the Capitol attack, citing his role in inciting it.
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The tech billionaire on Thursday also proposed that Congress make changes to internet regulations that would require social media platforms to have systems in place for identifying unlawful content and removing it. The suggestions could further advantage Facebook’s dominance online.
