Zuckerberg : between Facebook and Trump there are „no agreements at all

Zuckerberg : between Facebook and Trump there are „no agreements at all

Washington, 21.2.2020

In an interview with Axios, Mark Zuckerberg refuted suspicions that Facebook was giving President Trump lenient treatment as part of an agreement on the platform.
„I have also heard this speculation, so let me be clear: there is no agreement whatsoever,“ Zuckerberg told Axios. „Actually, the whole idea of a deal is quite ridiculous.“
The background to this is that while Trump is increasingly being scrutinized for rule-breaking on other social platforms – most notably Twitter – the President’s activity on Facebook has remained largely untouched. In October, Zuckerberg faced criticism for attending an unannounced dinner at the White House with the President and Facebook board member and close ally of Trump, Peter Thiel.
„I accepted the dinner invitation because I was in town and he is the President of the United States,“ Zuckerberg said, noting that he did the same during the Obama administration. „The fact that I met with a head of state shouldn’t come as a surprise and doesn’t suggest that we have some kind of agreement.
A lot of people have claimed that Facebook has too much sympathy for the Trump administration, and there has also been talk of a friendly dynamic. However, the Facebook CEO said that „giving people some room for discourse“ was not the same as agreeing with their beliefs.
The idea that Facebook could elicit an agreement from the President, e.g. for less regulatory control, was also difficult to imagine because any change in the rules applicable to Facebook would also apply to other online platforms, some commentators said. When President Trump signed an executive order aimed at punishing Twitter for taking action against his tweets, the threat generally applied to all social media sites, including Facebook.
Nevertheless, the Department of Justice, which works closely with the White House, can decide which company it chooses in its antitrust prosecutions. Moreover, Trump’s ability to mobilize his political allies in Congress against enemies of his choice should not be underestimated, he said.
Zuckerberg’s reluctance to criticize Trump is well documented, some commentators stress. But recently, he has criticized the US administration’s failures in a live streaming chat with Anthony Fauci, Trump’s pandemic advisor. These included the extension of the national test, as well as the refusal of some parts of the government to recommend the wearing of masks as a protective measure.