UPDATED 23:26 EDT / OCTOBER 14 2019

POLICY

Mark Zuckerberg rebuts criticism of his dinner with conservative leaders

Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has been hosting dinner parties with conservative pundits, journalists and politicians, according to a report published Monday by Politico, something that has sparked controversy.

According to that report, Zuckerberg has reached out to various conservatives amid accusations that he’s biased in some way against the right. That includes President Donald Trump, who this year threatened to sue Facebook over alleged bias.

Facebook has also been criticized by left-leaning presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren, who on top of railing against tech monopolies has lambasted Facebook for the spread of disinformation.

“We intentionally made a Facebook ad with false claims and submitted it to Facebook’s ad platform to see if it’d be approved,” she tweeted over the weekend. “It got approved quickly and the ad is now running on Facebook.”

“Facebook holds incredible power to affect elections and our national debate,” Warren went on. “They’ve decided to let political figures lie to you — even about Facebook itself — while their executives and their investors get even richer off the ads containing these lies.”

Zuckerberg responded to critics about the dinner, stating that he wasn’t so much holding out an olive branch to figures on the right but broadening his point of view.

“There’s some press today discussing dinners I’ve had with conservative politicians, media and thinkers,” he said in a Facebook post Monday. “To be clear, I have dinners with lots of people across the spectrum on lots of different issues all the time. Meeting new people and hearing from a wide range of viewpoints is part of learning. If you haven’t tried it, I suggest you do!”

According to someone reportedly familiar with the dinner parties, each lasts a few hours and Zuckerberg invites people with various political standpoints. That person said the discussions with right-leaning people have centered on “free expression, unfair treatment of conservatives, the appeals process for real or perceived unfair treatment, fact checking, partnerships and privacy.”

Although that might appease some of his critics on the right, the fact remains that currently Facebook’s biggest enemy is a Democrat, and that is Elizabeth Warren.

Image: Christoph Scholz/Flickr

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