In a speech, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, portrayed his company as a “bastion of free speech.” He also defended the notorious policy on political advertisements, which are still allowed on the platform, without Facebook subjecting the content of those political messages to a factual check.
In a speech full of references to the First Amendment of the American Constitution (which guarantees freedom of expression, among other things) that he gave at Georgetown University, Zuckerberg tried the negative image that has arisen in recent years about the infamous company, to turn.
Zuckerberg cited the ‘fight for democracy’ several times and stated that ‘the way and scale on which people can now express themselves (via Facebook and social media, ed.) Is a new force in the world: it is the Fifth Power alongside the other power structures of our society.”
According to Zuckerberg, his company is “a champion and a bastion of free speech. Given the sensitivity of political ads, I thought about banning them entirely.
But political ads are an essential way to make your voice heard, especially for local candidates, new challengers and interest groups who would otherwise not have much media coverage. Get attention. Banning political advertisements favours incumbent politicians and those who get media attention, he said.
In recent years, Facebook has regularly been under fire because of the lax approach to fake news and disinformation and the company’s inability to quickly take violent content that spread through the network like an oil slick all over the world offline. Subsequently, several new calls were made for new, stricter regulations.