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Mark Zuckerberg And Nigel Farage Debate Facebook Censorship In European Parliament Forum [Video]

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The social media CEO insists that his platform is open to all ideologies. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg answered questions today in the Brussels-based European…
The social media CEO insists that his platform is open to all ideologies.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg answered questions today in the Brussels-based European Parliament and had a notable exchange about censorship with Nigel Farage, the former leader of the U. K. Independence Party who is considered the architect of Brexit.
In this context, Zuckerberg faced similar inquiries from some GOP senators last month on Capitol Hill, particularly about the status of the irreverent, pro-Trump siblings Diamond and Silk. The North Carolina sisters claimed that six months ago, traffic on their Facebook page dropped precipitously and they were subsequently deemed “unsafe to the community.”
During his D. C. testimony, Zuckerberg admitted that the Silicon Valley is “an extremely left-leaning place,” but that Facebook has tried to take steps to root out any political bias among his content review staff. He eventually told the lawmakers that the Diamond and Silk designation was a mistake by the Facebook enforcement team
In his dialogue with Zuckerberg today, MEP Farage credited Facebook for enabling Brexit (the U. K. vote to leave the European Union), as well as the election of U. S. President Donald Trump, and the election of the populist, EU-skeptic coalition in Italy.
Farage implied that his own engagement was down 25 percent this year while noting that many others who share a conservative, libertarian, or populist philosophy are “being willfully discriminated against.”
Later today I will confront Mark Zuckerberg about bias on Facebook. Sign up here so you never miss an update: https://t.co/CWHj778G0H pic.twitter.com/5gkHcKq4o1
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) May 22,2018
Farage then floated the possibility of regulation, but in a somewhat different way then has previously been proposed.
“I’m not generally somebody who calls for legislation on the international stage, but I’m beginning to wonder whether we need a social media bill of rights to basically protect free speech. I’m asking you today, very, very clearly that would you accept today that Facebook is not a platform for all ideas that is operated impartially?”
“We are committed to being a platform for all ideas. That means we want to make it so that people can come to our ‘service’ and share any idea across the political spectrum. It’s very important to me that we’re a ‘service’ that allows for a wide variety of political discourse; we view that as a big part of our responsibility. I can commit to you here today that we… have never and will not make decisions about what content is allowed, or how we do ranking, on the basis of a political orientation…”
Zuckerberg added that the engagement level on some pages may have dropped because Facebook has emphasized family- and friends-related content rather than so-called public content.
Farage also questioned Zuckerberg about the need for more transparency about third-party fact-checkers.
Against this backdrop, Trump supporters and others have accused the progressive tech giants of engaging in censorship of right-wing websites and individuals (or those perceived as harboring those leanings) through methods such as the above-referenced algorithm changes, or shadow banning, throttling, de-platforming, and de-monetization, or artificially trending or not trending certain topics.
A number of personalities and blogs on the right have found themselves suspended for alleged hate speech or violations of terms of service under broad-brush or vague standards that they claim aren’t applied to their left-wing counterparts. The Trump cohort has also alleged that Silicon Valley only partners with liberal fact-checkers who advance a political agenda in the way they evaluate news.
Watch the Mark Zuckerberg-Nigel Farage exchange in the clip below and draw your own conclusions.
My message to Mark Zuckerberg today:
Stop telling us Facebook is a “platform for all ideas”. The evidence shows your algorithms censor conservative opinions. pic.twitter.com/HWLabaDcP9
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) May 22,2018

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