President Trump took aim at Facebook, calling the social
network “anti-Trump.” But the social network insists it is pro-democracy
and pro-truth — and the German election shows it.
The president’s post on Twitter
added to the pressure that Facebook has been under, facing accusations
of partisanship from both sides of the political aisle. The social
network has been accused of spreading fake news that influenced the
outcome of the presidential election last year, and more recently, it
acknowledged that Russians used fake accounts and Facebook ads to push
divisive issues during the campaign.
“Trump says Facebook is against him,” Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, said in apost addressing Mr. Trump’s tweet. “Liberals say we helped Trump. Both sides are upset about ideas and content they don’t like.”
The accusations have left Facebook with something to prove: that it is ready for the next election.
“Every
day I work to bring people together and build a community for
everyone,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. “We hope to give all people a voice and
create a platform for all ideas.”
Mr.
Zuckerberg expressed regret for initially appearing dismissive of his
company’s potential effects on the 2016 election, saying that the topic
was “too important.” But he also repeated a point he has made many times
— that Facebook’s broader impact, “from giving people a voice to
enabling candidates to communicate directly to helping millions of
people vote,” had a much greater effect on the election than that of
misinformation on the platform.
But
Facebook does not want to appear caught off guard again. To spread a
message that it is more election-ready, the social network earlier on
Wednesday leaned on its experience in Germany, which re-elected Angela Merkel to a fourth term as chancellor on Sunday.
Facebook said
that it had taken roughly a dozen significant steps to combat
misinformation on its site before the German elections, including
deleting “tens of thousands” of Facebook accounts that it had suspected
of being fake.
“These
actions did not eliminate misinformation entirely in this election —
but they did make it harder to spread, and less likely to appear in
people’s News Feeds,” Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice president of public
policy in Europe, said in a company blog post. “We learned a lot, and
will continue to apply those lessons in other forthcoming elections.”
Facebook’s influence on elections has been a much-discussed topic, spurred by how the social network has turned over information
to Congress and federal investigators — including Robert S. Mueller
III, the special counsel investigating Russian influence in the 2016
presidential election — about Russia-linked political ads.
The
company has been trying to show that it is doing enough to combat
misinformation and the misuse of its system in elections. Last week, Mr.
Zuckerberg addressed his network of more than 2 billion people
about the social network’s role in democracies, specifically mentioning
the work the company was doing to prepare for the German vote.
“It
is a new challenge for internet communities to deal with nation-states
attempting to subvert elections,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “But if that’s
what we must do, we are committed to rising to the occasion. We are in a
new world.”