By Bowdeya Tweh and Dave Sebastian 

Mark Zuckerberg this week reiterated his view that Facebook Inc.'s mission is to bring people together. But a Thursday speech, in which he positioned the social-media platform as a bastion of free speech, fueled more disagreement over how the tech giant handles content and influences public discourse.

The Facebook chief executive invoked Martin Luther King Jr. and abolitionist Frederick Douglass in a roughly 37-minute speech at Georgetown University, casting his company's efforts to foster free and inclusive expression as a digital-age extension of the ideals behind the First Amendment and the U.S. civil-rights movement.

That message resonated with some, particularly on the right, with some supporting citing free speech in support of Mr. Zuckerberg. But others, including some on the left, accused the company of allowing false and misleading information that distorts public discourse, and of having fluid rules around the types of speech that are permissible.

"I'd like to help Facebook better understand the challenges #MLK faced from disinformation campaigns launched by politicians," Bernice King, one of Dr. King's daughters and CEO of the King Center in Atlanta, said on Twitter. "These campaigns created an atmosphere for his assassination." Ms. King couldn't be immediately reached for additional comment Friday.

The speech, which was live streamed on Mr. Zuckerberg's Facebook page, was viewed more than 1.1 million times as of Friday, generating more than 62,000 comments. A transcript of the speech, published on Facebook, resulted in thousands more comments.

Some conservatives found the speech reassuring. "We shouldn't expect Facebook to be perfect," said Roslyn Layton, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "What we should watch is how well they respond when there is a problem or a challenge. I think he's stepping up."

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, (R., Calif.), said the values Mr. Zuckerberg discussed Thursday are "uniquely and inherently American values" that Congress should fight to protect. "Yesterday was a heartening reminder that free expression still is the best business model in the world," he said in a Friday statement.

Mr. Zuckerberg's talk was delivered as Facebook is facing antitrust scrutiny on multiple fronts and fresh criticism over its handling of misinformation. The presidential campaign of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat who has called for the breakup of Facebook and other big technology companies, paid for an advertisement containing a false claim about Mr. Zuckerberg, seeking to turn attention to the company's policies.

Democrats had previously called on Facebook to remove an ad from President Trump's re-election campaign that made an unsubstantiated claim against former Vice President Joe Biden.

Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media watchdog group, said Facebook should require political ads to disclose the source of its claims, and that it is possible for the company to do so without raising strong concerns about censorship. .

"It's a little less of a free speech thing and more of a question of 'Is it fair to use those airways to use that platform to directly distribute lies to people?'" Mr. Carusone said. "I don't expect Facebook to be fact-checkers. What I expect them to do is to do some very basic substantiation requirements."

Mr. Zuckerberg said Thursday the company doesn't fact-check political ads and isn't planning on banning them from the platform. But he said Facebook has sharpened its policies to make such ads more transparent.

"We're at a crossroads now," said Mr. Zuckerberg, referencing politically motivated efforts to restrict speech, in an interview with Fox News host Dana Perino that was aired Friday. "We always look back and regret it when we pull back on free expression."

At the same time, the 35-year-old executive pushed back on politicians' calls to break up the company in the Friday interview, faulting governments for not moving faster to set rules regarding harmful content and efforts to manipulate elections.

Mr. Zuckerberg said in his Thursday speech that many institutions are needed to police content online, pointing to efforts like the independent panel being established to oversee and adjudicate content-moderation decisions made at Facebook.

Determining an ad's veracity could prove challenging for companies, but a company as large as Facebook has responsibilities beyond the hands-off approach Mr. Zuckerberg discussed, said Michael Delli Carpini, a professor who studies political communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

"That is a slippery slope here," he said. "One person's inaccuracy is another person's speculation. What is and is not true is not easily determined a lot of times."

Concerns about false information in ads could erode users' trust in the Facebook platform overall, said Andrew Rojecki, a University of Illinois at Chicago professor who studies political communication.

Facebook's CEO held out China's heavily censored social-media outlets as a contrast to the free discussion on Facebook. "Is that the internet we want?" he said.

Facebook, which the Chinese government for years has barred its people from accessing, has long sought entry to that market. Mr. Zuckerberg said censorship is one reason Facebook's services aren't available in one of the world's most populous countries.

Sen. Josh Hawley, (R., Mo.), posted tweets Thursday critical of the speech, citing prior interest in complying with Chinese government requirements. "Interesting way to advocate free speech," he tweeted. His office couldn't immediately be reached for comment Friday.

--Ryan Tracy and Jeff Horwitz contributed to this article.

Write to Bowdeya Tweh at Bowdeya.Tweh@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 18, 2019 17:22 ET (21:22 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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