The chair of the House Financial Services Committee lambasted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over its policy of allowing inaccurate information on political ads, saying it allows the company to pad its bottom line.
Rep. Maxine Waters kicked off a hearing Wednesday by citing an issue that has earned criticism from many Democrats who believe the social media giant should pull an ad from President Trump’s reelection campaign that contained erroneous information.
Facebook’s policy not to fact-check ads from elected officials “gives politicians a license to lie so you can earn more money off this division,” Waters, a California Democrat, told Zuckerberg.
The complaints from Democrats underscore concerns about whether Facebook is doing enough to combat the spread of disinformation on the platform ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
The company has faced scrutiny for its role in Russia’s influence campaign in 2016 through which content posted on Facebook aimed to sow division among U.S. voters and sway the presidential race.
“Despite all of your technological expertise, Russia and Iran are at it again for the upcoming election,” Waters said, referring to recent revelations from Facebook that it removed campaigns linked to Russia and Iran that targeted the United States and swing-state users on Facebook and Instagram.
Zuckerberg admitted his company was caught on its “back foot in terms of preventing Russia from interfering in our elections” in 2016, but has spent the intervening years building systems to protect against foreign interference. Those systems, he added, are superior to those used by other companies and even some governments.
The Facebook CEO and founder reiterated, though, that Facebook will not fact-check content included in political ads or speech from politicians.
“The reason for that is that we believe that in a democracy, it is important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying,” he told lawmakers.
Zuckerberg also rebuffed Waters’ suggestion that Facebook’s policy regarding information on political ads is driven by profits.
“From a business perspective, the very small percent of our business that is made up of political ads does not come anywhere close to justifying the controversy that this incurs for our company,” he said. “This really is not about money.”
Following Waters’ questions about Facebook’s fact-checking policies, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., pressed Zuckerberg to define the boundaries for inaccurate information in political ads.
Ocasio-Cortez asked the Facebook chief whether a political campaign could target predominantly African-American zip codes and disseminate ads with the incorrect date of the election. Zuckerberg, however, said its policies prohibit content that leads to voter suppression, and those ads would be removed.
She also questioned whether a political campaign could run ads targeting Republicans in primary contests that erroneously said they voted for the Green New Deal, to which Zuckerberg said he said they “probably” could.
“Lying is bad, and I think if you were to run an ad that had a lie, that would be bad,” he said. “That’s different from it being in our position, the right thing to do to prevent your constituents or people in an election from seeing that you had lied.”
Ocasio-Cortez also took issue with Facebook partnering with The Daily Caller, a conservative website, for its fact-checking initiative. The news organization, she said, has ties to white supremacists.
But Zuckerberg said fact-checkers are approved by the Poynter Institute’s Independent Fact-Checking Network, which applies a “rigorous standard” for those permitted to conduct fact-checking.
Zuckerberg’s appearance before the House Financial Services Committee marks the first time he has fielded questions from lawmakers since April 2018.
His company, with more than 2 billion monthly users, has been under heavy fire from Congress over its mishandling of user data, efforts to stop the spread of extremist and harmful content online, and its plans for a cryptocurrency called Libra. On Thursday, he weathered attacks from lawmakers on a variety of issues, from what Facebook is doing to stop child exploitation on the platform to its advertising policies that have led to discrimination to the workplace conditions for its content moderators.
Libra was a key focus for the committee, which Facebook is attempting to launch with partners. A number of those partners, however, have pulled out of their commitments to join the Libra Association, decisions that prompted scrutiny from lawmakers.
Zuckerberg said partners including Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal have dropped out “because it’s a risky project and there’s been a lot of scrutiny.”
“I actually don’t know if Libra is going to work,” he acknowledged.
