- "Facebook, all of them, they're all about making money," Pelosi said. "Their business model is to make money at the expense of the truth and the facts ... and they defend that."
- Trump is poised to sign an executive order that would attempt to limit laws that protect social media companies from liability for the content published on their platforms.
- This comes after Twitter fact-checked two of the president's tweets, which contained false information about mail-in voting.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories .
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Nancy Pelosi slams Mark Zuckerberg for 'pandering' to Trump by attacking Twitter's fact-check of his false claims
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday accused Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of pandering to President Donald Trump by criticizing Twitter's fact-check of Trump's false claims.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday accused Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of pandering to President Donald Trump by refusing to regulate misinformation on his platform as the president accuses Twitter and other social media companies of censorship.
"They don't want to be regulated. So they pander to the White House," Pelosi said during a Thursday press conference. "You see what Facebook's Zuckerberg is saying today about all of this. They're just pandering."
Trump is poised to sign an executive order that would attempt to limit laws that protect social media companies from liability for the content published on their platforms. The order is a direct response to Twitter fact-checking two of the president's tweets for the first time.
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Following Trump's announcement, Zuckerberg has made the media rounds criticizing Twitter's fact-check and insisting social media platforms shouldn't be "arbiters of truth."
"I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn't be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online," Zuckerberg said in an interview with Fox News. "Private companies probably shouldn't be, especially these platform companies, shouldn't be in the position of doing that."
Pelosi argued that Facebook's business model is misinformation and accused the company of being driven by a desire to avoid taxes and regulation, while "hid[ing] under freedom of speech."
"Facebook, all of them, they're all about making money," Pelosi said. "Their business model is to make money at the expense of the truth and the facts ... and they defend that."
Pelosi called Trump's forthcoming executive order, which he is expected to sign on Thursday, "silly" and "a distraction" from the coronavirus pandemic.
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Other prominent Democrats have previously been critical of Zuckerberg's reluctance to control the spread of misinformation on his platform. Hillary Clinton called the Facebook chief's approach "Trumpian" and "authoritarian" in an interview earlier this year.
Clinton argued that Zuckerberg has been "somehow persuaded ... that it's to his and Facebook's advantage not to cross Trump. That's what I believe."
The former Democratic presidential nominee pointed to a video of Pelosi that was doctored to make it appear she was slurring her speech, which went viral online while Facebook refused to remove it.
During the 2016 election, Facebook was weaponized by foreign governments to interfere in the election and spread disinformation, while two billion users' private data was illegally harvested by data analytics company Cambridge Analytica, which worked with the Trump campaign.
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See Also:
- Mark Zuckerberg told Fox News that Facebook would not fact-check Trump's false claims as Twitter did
- 'Absolutely no legal authority': Trump's threats to shut down Twitter are 'totally asinine' and reek of censorship, according to legal experts
- White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who has promoted conspiracy theories about mail-in-voting fraud, voted by mail 11 times over the past 10 years
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