Zuckerberg: ‘Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online’

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday doubled down on his defense of the platform not labeling misinformation shared by politicians after Twitter placed warnings on two posts from President Trump it deemed “misleading.” 

Asked by Fox News’ Dana Perino if he thought Twitter “made the wrong decision,” Zuckerberg said his platform has “a different policy than Twitter on this.” 

“I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,” Zuckerberg said in the interview on Fox’s “The Daily Briefing.” “I think in general private companies probably shouldn’t be — especially these platform companies — shouldn’t be in the position of doing that.” 

The rest of Zuckerberg’s interview is scheduled to air Thursday. 

Twitter placed warnings on two of Trump’s tweets for the first time Tuesday. The warnings were placed on posts the president made making unsubstantiated claims that California’s mail-in voting was full of fraud. 

A spokesperson for Twitter told The Hill the president’s tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots.” 

Zuckerberg has previously defended Facebook’s decision to allow politicians to post political ads with misleading or false claims on its platform. 

During a speech at Georgetown University in October, the CEO said he doesn’t think it’s right for a private company to “censor politicians or the news in a democracy.” 

“Political ads on Facebook are more transparent than anywhere else,” Zuckerberg said. “We don’t fact check political ads… because we believe people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.”