During an exclusive interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday’s Good Morning America, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos actually urged the tech executive to crack down on people using the social media platform to organize protests against coronavirus lockdowns. Amazingly, Zuckerberg appeared to agree with the disturbing idea.
“Facebook also holds its users accountable by continuing to monitor and flag posts for harmful misinformation about the disease,” Stephanopoulos touted during the exchange. He then asked: “How do you deal with the fact that Facebook is now being uses to organize a lot of these protests that defy social distancing, defy the social distancing guidelines in states? Is somebody trying to organize something like that, does that qualify as harmful information?”
In response, Zuckerberg seemed to confirm that kind of crackdown was already happening: “We do classify that as harmful misinformation and we take that down.” Though he then at least briefly and vaguely alluded to the constitutional right to protest: “At the same time, you know, it’s important that people can debate policies, so there’s a line on this.”
When it comes to defining where that line is or who makes those decisions, Zuckerberg didn’t elaborate.
On Sunday, both GMA and NBC’s Today show dismissed protests across the country as “astroturf” and an attitude “not reflected” in recent polls.
Wrapping up a similar derisive report on Monday’s CBS This Morning, correspondent Manuel Bojorquez also worried about Facebook allowing protests to be organized on the platform:
Some of those anti-quarantine protests are possibly being organized by conservative pro-gun activists. Facebook tells us that unless the government prohibits those events, it will continue to allow them to be organized on Facebook.
However, that statement would seem to conflict with Zuckerberg’s comments to Stephanopoulos.
It’s one thing to criticize protesters for not taking proper social distancing precautions – some have and some have not – but it’s quite another for a news anchor and the head of a tech company to take it upon themselves to decide whether or not people should be allowed to even organize protests.
Here is a transcript of the April 20 exchange between Stephanopoulos and Zuckerberg:
7:35 AM ET
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GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Facebook also holds its users accountable by continuing to monitor and flag posts for harmful misinformation about the disease. How do you deal with the fact that Facebook is now being uses to organize a lot of these protests that defy social distancing, defy the social distancing guidelines in states? Is somebody trying to organize something like that, does that qualify as harmful information?
MARK ZUCKERBERG: We do qualify that as harmful misinformation and we take that down. At the same time, you know, it’s important that people can debate policies, so there’s a line on this. But more than normal political discourse, I think a lot of the stuff that people are saying that is false around a health emergency like this can be classified as harmful misinformation.
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