Zuckerberg to Trump: Facebook Not Against You

Facebook CEO and Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg delivers the commencement address at Harvard University commencement exercises, Thursday, May 25, 2017, in Cambridge, Mass., (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

By Greg Richter | NEWSMAX

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg took issue with President Donald Trump’s claim the social media platform has opposed him, saying instead Facebook has sought to bring all people together in community.

“Trump says Facebook is against him; liberals say we helped Trump; both sides are upset about ideas and content they don’t like,” Zuckerberg said in Facebook post Wednesday. “That’s what running a platform for all ideas looks like.”

Zuckerberg’s post came in response to a tweet earlier Wednesday, in which President Trump said:

But Zuckerberg said Facebook’s real role in the 2016 election was helping to give a voice to more people than ever before.

“There were billions of interactions discussing the issues that may have never happened offline,” he said. “Every topic was discussed, not just what the media covered.”

Also, he said, the 2016 election was the first in which the Internet was the primary form of communication candidates used.

“Every candidate had a Facebook page to communicate directly with tens of millions of followers every day,” he said. “Campaigns spent hundreds of millions advertising online to get their messages out even further.”

That represented much more than any “problematic ads” discovered, Zuckerberg said, a likely reference to the 3,000 ads bought by Russians in an attempt to either sway the election or sow discord within the population and other “fake news” posts made on the site.

Facebook also ran “get out the vote” efforts that registered two million new voters, he said, more than the Trump and Hillary Clinton campaigns combined.

But Zuckerberg did admit it was a mistake when he said the idea that misinformation on Facebook changed the outcome of the election was a “crazy idea.”

“Calling that crazy was dismissive, and I regret it,” he said. “This is too important an issue to be dismissive. But the data we have has always shown that our broader impact — from giving people a voice to enabling candidates to communicate directly to helping millions of people vote — played a far bigger role in this election.”

Facebook has also defended itself against influencing elections by pointing to its efforts in Germany to remove fake accounts and present all sides to issues, The New York Times noted.

___
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-not-against/2017/09/27/id/816237/