WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lashed into social media giant Facebook on Wednesday — accusing founder Mark Zuckerberg of “pandering to the White House” after he refused to police political speech on his platform.
“Facebook, all of them, they’re all about making money. Their business model is to make money at the expense of the truth and the facts,” Pelosi said Thursday, accusing Facebook of trying to “hide under the freedom of speech.”
The comments come amid an intense political debate sparked when Twitter decided to take the unprecedented step of annotating two of President Trump’s tweets about mail-in ballots — infuriating the White House, which is preparing an executive order on social media bias sometime Thursday.
In an MSNBC interview Thursday, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg criticized Twitter, saying he did not think social media networks should be fact-checking political speech and that he would not be enacting similar measures on his platform.
“I don’t think that Facebook or internet platforms in general should be arbiters of truth,” Zuckerberg told “Squawk Box” host Andrew Ross Sorkin.
“Political speech is one of the most sensitive parts in a democracy, and people should be able to see what politicians say,” he continued.
“All they want is to not pay taxes,” barked Pelosi. “And they don’t want to be regulated, so they pander to the White House. You see what Facebook’s Zuckerberg is saying today about all this. He just panders.”
Trump on Thursday is expected to sign an executive order revising a law that protects Twitter, Facebook and Google from liability for what is published on their websites, according to a Reuters report.
The order will reportedly roll back those regulations, exposing the tech giants to lawsuits.
Supporters of the president lashed into Twitter boss Jack Dorsey after the website on Tuesday added fact-checking warnings to his tweets claiming that mail-in ballots would lead to a “rigged election.”
Dorsey defended his decision after Zuckerberg’s criticism, saying the company would “continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally.”
“This does not make us an ‘arbiter of truth,’” Dorsey tweeted.
“Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves. More transparency from us is critical so folks can clearly see the why behind our actions.”
But Pelosi accused Twitter of being “very selective” in their fact-checking of Trump — referring to the president’s dubious claims that MSNBC anchor and former Florida Congressman Joe Scarborough was somehow involved in the death of an intern in his office 20 years ago.
Dorsey ignored an impassioned letter from the woman’s widower asking him to remove Trump’s tweets promoting the conspiracy theory.
