Mark Zuckerberg on Allowing Political Ads: ‘People Should Be Able to Judge for Themselves’

Mark Zuckerberg (Credit Image: Friesehamburg / Wikimedia)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is defending the company’s policy against removing political advertising that contains misinformation, telling CBS News that the network’s users “should be able to judge for themselves.”

“[I]t’s really important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying, so they can make their own judgments,” Zuckerberg told CBS’ Gayle King in a joint interview with his wife, Priscilla Chan. “And, you know, I don’t think that a private company should be censoring politicians or news.”

King pressed the CEO on criticisms the policy has faced, including nearly 200 Facebook employees who wrote a letter arguing that “free speech and paid speech are not the same.”

“Well, this is a clearly a very complex issue, and a lot of people have — have a lot of different opinions,” Zuckerberg responded. “At the end of the day, I just think that in a democracy, people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.”

Pressed by King on whether that still applied in cases when the ads were spreading false claims, Zuckerberg repeated, “I think that people should be able to judge for themselves the character of politicians.”

Facebook faced criticism earlier this year after it denied a request from former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign to remove an ad being run by President Trump’s reelection campaign.

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