Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated during a recent speech that the company is going to “piss off a lot of people” as Facebook focuses on free expression over censorship. According to Zuckerberg, it “feels like the list of things that you’re not allowed to say socially keeps on growing.”
CNBC reports that while speaking at the Silicon Slopes Tech Summit 2020 in Salt Lake City, Utah, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that Facebook would be standing for principles it believes in whether it upsets critics or not. Notably, Zuckerberg proclaimed the tech giant’s dedication to free speech.
“We’re going to stand up for free expression,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s unfortunate that this is such a controversial thing.” He went on to state “There are real questions the internet raises around the democratic process, its integrity, around free expression vs. safety, around privacy and competition and well-being, and I mean, we need to get these right.”
“The last thing I want is for our products to be used to divide people or rip society apart in any kind of way,” said Zuckerberg. “But at some point, we’ve got to stand up and say, ‘No, we’re going to stand for free expression.’ Yeah, we’re going to take down the content that’s really harmful, but the line needs to be held at some point.”
Zuckerberg discussed critics of the platform calling for further censorship, stating: “Increasingly, we’re getting called in to censor a lot of different kinds of content that makes me really uncomfortable. It kind of feels like the list of things that you’re not allowed to say socially keeps on growing.”
“The people who are criticizing and saying that more stuff needs to be censored are never the people who are actually at risk of being censored themselves,” Zuckerberg said. “They have their ways of getting stuff out.” Recently, Facebook has resisted increasing political pressure to fact-check or censor political ads on its platform. So far, the company has refused to do so.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
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