Listen to this article

The former U.S secretary of the State, Hillary Clinton has alleged the chief executive Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. She alleged that Zuckerberg is looking to use the potential of the platform to re-elect Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Hillary Clinton told The Atlantic of her concern over Zuckerberg’s influence and his supposed unwillingness to handle misinformation. She said, “They have, in my view, contorted themselves into making arguments about freedom of speech and censorship, which they are hanging on to because it’s in their commercial interests”. It is noteworthy that Facebook has sparked a bitter row with its decision to allow politicians to lie in paid advertisements, despite banning ordinary users from doing so.

Senior Facebook officials have sought to justify the decision in terms of free speech. They claimed the public should see politicians’ unedited statements even if they aren’t aware of their falsity. Trump’s re-election campaign has already courted controversy with a misleading Facebook advert pushing a conspiracy regarding possible challenger Joe Biden. She suggested the social media giant inadvertently influenced her defeat in the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton said there was a reason to believe that Facebook is not just going to re-elect Trump, but intends to re-elect Trump. Zuckerberg has been somehow persuaded that it’s to his and Facebook’s advantage not to cross Trump. That’s what I believe. And it just gives me a pit in my stomach”.

The co-founder of Facebook was recently forced to deny the president had lobbied him after NBC discovered the pair enjoyed an intimate White House dinner and it wasn’t publicly disclosed. Zuckerberg informed CBS News and said, “Things that were on his mind, and some of the topics that you’d read about in the news around our work”. Facebook decided to include the platform of the alt-right, Breitbart News, in its high-quality news section in October. Politico earlier reported that Zuckerberg had been hosting off-the-record dinners and informal talks to discuss free speech with controversial right-wing journalists like Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, and politician Lindsey Graham. The meetings came following unsubstantiated allegations that Facebook was censoring right-wing news sites.