Zuckerberg Defiant on Controversial Ad Policy

Mark Zuckerberg has been taking fierce criticism over Facebook's refusal to take down political ads that have false information. However, in an interview with CBS News on Monday morning, Zuckerberg made clear the policy will not change, notes Axios. "I don't think that a private company should be censoring politicians or news," the CEO told Gayle King, who then pressed the issue. "Even if the ads are—contain false information?" she asked. "That's the issue." To which he responded, "I think that people should be able to judge for themselves the character of politicians."

Zuckerberg and his team maintain that this is a free-speech issue and that they have no business removing posts over accuracy. But King pointed out that some of his own employees have publicly criticized the policy, saying there is a big difference between free speech and paid speech. "Well, this is a clearly a very complex issue, and a lot of people have, have a lot of different opinions," Zuckerberg said. "At the end of the day, I just think that in a democracy, people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying." (Sacha Baron Cohen says that under this policy, Facebook would have allowed Hitler to post about his "solution" to the "Jewish problem.")