The quarterly report is also a brief distraction from the company’s current controversy involving the way it handles political advertising across the service. For weeks, the company has been criticized for a recent decision to not require that ads bought by political candidates be fact-checked for accuracy. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, has defended the policy, arguing that Facebook doesn’t wish to be the arbiter of free speech across the platform.
“People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world — a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in an address delivered to Georgetown students this month.
Facebook has taken significant criticism for the policy on political ads. Internally, employees dissatisfied with the decision wrote an open letter to company executives this week, imploring them to consider revising the decision.
And on Wednesday, Twitter escalated the issue by barring all political advertising from its platform entirely. “Paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle,” Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, tweeted Wednesday afternoon. “It’s worth stepping back in order to address.”
Instead of wavering, Mr. Zuckerberg reaffirmed the company’s position on Wednesday.
“From a business perspective, it might be easier for us to choose a different path than the one we’re taking,” he said on a conference call with investors. “But in a democracy, I don’t think it’s right for private companies to censor politicians, or the news.”
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/technology/facebooks-earnings-and-revenue-jump-topping-forecasts.html?emc=rss&partner=rss
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