Mark Zuckerberg is a hypocrite and a Trumpist

Mark Zuckerberg is a hypocrite and a

Trumpist

The Facebook CEO knew what he was doing wading into the president’s latest tantrum

Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t think social media companies should be arbiters of truth. He’s full of shit.

In an interview with Fox News anchor Dana Perino, the Facebook founder and CEO chided Twitter for its decision to add a fact check to one of President Donald Trump’s tweets containing an unhinged conspiracy theory about rampant voter fraud. According to Zuckerberg, that’s not the kind of thing Facebook would do because the social media company is committed to free speech and letting people judge for themselves whether politicians are telling the truth. But as is so often the case when it comes to the Silicon Valley billionaires guiding our digital lives, he’s not being entirely honest about how Facebook has handled the Trump era.

Let’s review the simple truth about Zuckerberg: He’s a hypocrite and a Trumpist. It might seem Facebook has followed this “free speech” approach in turning a blind eye to Trump’s many lies, but  he's shown he’s more than willing to be an “arbiter of truth” for others. Facebook does fact-check posts, and it does limit their reach and flag violations based on what third-party fact-checkers determine -- but it has also carved out a Trump-sized exemption for politicians. Prior to an October change to Facebook’s advertising rules on false information, Trump had been repeatedly violating its policies without facing consequences. That October policy change exempted politicians on the advertising side of things, as well.

Statements from politicians are exempt from fact-checking on Facebook except for two specific areas: misleading posts about the U.S. Census and voting. “Attempts to interfere with or suppress voting undermine our core values as a company, and we work proactively to remove this type of harmful content,” reads an October Facebook blog post on content that may suppress votes. “We remove this type of content regardless of who it’s coming from.” This was later clarified on Facebook’s blog post about census misinformation, specifying that “as with voter interference, content that violates our census interference policy will not be allowed to remain on our platforms as newsworthy even if posted by a politician.”

In March, Facebook briefly allowed the Trump campaign to run ads that violated its census interference policy before changing course. According to a Media Matters analysis earlier this month, the Trump campaign published at least 529 Facebook ads with false claims of voter fraud in just two days, which it shouldn’t have received exemptions to do under Facebook’s voter suppression rule.