Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike want Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to block some content from the social media platform he developed in a dorm room at Harvard.
They disagree on where to draw the line between appropriate and inappropriate, and Republican senators in particular aren’t sure they want employees in liberal-leaning Silicon Valley making the choice for some 2 billion users a month.
“You’re a private company, so you can make policies that may be less than First Amendment, full-spirit embracing, in my view,” Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican told Zuckerberg during a joint hearing of the chamber’s judiciary and commerce committees on Tuesday. “Facebook may decide it needs to police a whole bunch of speech that I think America might be better off not having policed by one company that has a really big and powerful platform.”
While the session was convened to examine Facebook’s privacy practices in the wake of revelations that a consultant for President Trump’s 2016 campaign improperly accessed data for some 87 million users, lawmakers also addressed past concerns that the platform allowed the posting of “fake news” articles designed to influence voters and had failed to block hate speech.
Artificial intelligence capabilities will make such issues progressively easier to address, Zuckerberg said, which is why Facebook is investing in them. But they also raise thorny issues involving free speech, guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
Having algorithms that proactively analyze, and potentially block some forms of content, “creates massive questions for society about what obligations we want to require companies to fulfill,” Zuckerberg said.
Preventing posts by terrorist groups inciting violence is easy. Deciding when passionate arguments on a particular social issue go too far, and who should make the choice, is much trickier, potentially casting tech firms in the role of Big Brother, the entity that policed commentary in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.
“That’s a question we need to struggle with as a country, ” Zuckerberg said, “because other countries are, and they’re putting laws in place.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, questioned whether Facebook is already blocking content from conservative groups more aggressively than from their liberal counterparts.
“There are a great many Americans who I think are deeply concerned that Facebook and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship,” Cruz said, citing examples such as a “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” page launched by former Republican Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee that was reportedly shut down in 2012.
Gay rights groups were protesting the Atlanta-based fast food chain at the time because of an executive’s comments opposing gay marriage.
More recently, Trump supporters Diamond and Silk said this week they had been told by Facebook that their “content and brand” were “unsafe to the community.” The conservative Internet pundits from North Carolina, whose real names are Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, suggested that the move might have been related to the approaching midterm elections.
Zuckerberg demurred with Cruz’s assertion, describing Facebook as a platform for all ideas and said he strives to ensure it doesn’t stifle any political views.
Still, he said, “I understand where that concern is coming from, because Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place.”
