House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Facebook’s behavior “shameful” during her weekly press conference Thursday.
“My thought about them is all they want are their tax cuts, and no antitrust action against them, and they schmooze this administration in that regard because, so far, that's what they have received,” she told Cheddar during the press conference. “I think that what they have said very blatantly, very clearly, that they intend to be accomplices for misleading the American people with money from God knows where.”
Pelosi and the tech giant, which resides in her home state of California, have butted heads before. Last summer Mark Zuckerberg stood by the company’s decision to keep up a doctored video of Pelosi in which she seemed to be slurring her words. While Facebook defended the decision to keep the video online, other technology companies, like YouTube, removed the content. After Facebook’s decision to let the video live on, the Speaker reportedly refused to answer a phone call from Zuckerberg.
On Thursday, she called the company’s behavior “shameful,” “irresponsible” and said it doesn’t care about the impact on children or on the truth.
Pelosi also noted Russian efforts to use Facebook to interfere with the 2016 election. It has been estimated 126 million Americans were reached via Zuckerberg’s platform.
“[Facebook] didn't even check on the money from Russia in the last election. They never even thought they should. So they have been very irresponsible,” she said. “As you say, these are people that we have known and worked with over time.”
“I think their behavior is shameful,” she said.
The social media site notes on its website that it uses technology and humans to identify fake accounts and aims to “promote news literacy and disrupt the financial incentives of spammers” in an effort to stop fake news.
Though officials have pressured the company to adjust policies ahead of the upcoming presidential election, Facebook has remained resolute. Last week, it said political campaigns may still use the site to target ads at particular groups of voters and has indicated it will not police ads if messages are truthful.
Other social networking sites have created new rules and guidelines ahead of the election. In October 2019, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, banned political advertising from the platform, saying internet political advertisements “present entirely new challenges to civic discourse.”
Google, too, announced that it will limit political ads.
Facebook is currently facing multiple antitrust investigations from the House, the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general.
At the time of publication, Facebook had not responded to Cheddar’s request for comment.
