Mark Zuckerberg Discusses Free Speech at Georgetown University

Mark Zuckerberg gives an address at Georgetown University. (Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service)

Facebook chief executive and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech defending the social media site’s stance on facilitating free speech at Georgetown University on October 17. He argued that social media companies should not get to decide the limits of free speech in a modern democracy and said that Facebook would not regulate political speech. 

The Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy (MPP) and its Institute of Politics and Public Service hosted the event in conjunction with the Free Speech Project, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and its Ethics Lab, and the MPP’s Massive Data Institute.

Addressing Georgetown students from the Gaston Hall stage, Zuckerberg said that policy decisions made by the company were created to ensure that “the values of voice and free expression are enshrined deeply into how [Facebook] is governed.” He stressed the importance of choosing to continue honoring the rights that the First Amendment gives to individuals in the United States as the “Social Media Age” faces new challenges. He said that Facebook was founded to empower people to widely share their perspectives and experiences and that these ideals remain critical to building a more inclusive society. 

Zuckerberg attempted to assuage recent concerns about the social media network’s role in the upcoming U.S. elections following a policy announcement that Facebook would not censor political advertisements, even if they contained misinformation. “While I worry about an erosion of truth, I don’t think that most people want to live in a world where you can only post things that tech companies judge to be 100 percent true,” Zuckerberg said. He stood by Facebook’s policy of refusing to take down misinformation, particularly when it comes from political actors. He supported this by saying that Facebook valued the authenticity of the author of information online—requiring evidence of identity such as a government-issued ID to run political advertisements—rather than judging the content of the speaker. 

The Facebook creator noted the proposal made by some activists that the website refuse to host political advertisements in any form but defended his decision to keep the ads by claiming that the removal of political advertisements would favor incumbents and candidates more commonly covered by traditional media. 

Zuckerberg has faced recent pushback from high profile political figures, including Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who called Facebook a “disinformation for-profit machine” and threatened to break up Facebook if elected president. In response to this threat, the Facebook founder proposed that, instead of focusing specifically on Facebook, government regulation should help make a path forward for all social media platforms in regards to the roles that they play in elections, as well as privacy and data access rules.

Zuckerberg emphasized throughout his speech that Facebook would continue to put freedom of speech at the forefront of its policies and platform changes and address unintended consequences of this—such as the incitement of violence—on a case-by-case basis. He stated that Facebook’s AI algorithms currently identify approximately 99 percent of terrorist content and take it down before users can interact with it. With exceptions that actively encouraged violence or risked well-being, he insisted that it is not Facebook’s role to monolithically decide what counts as dangerous speech as opposed to the exercise of free speech and he believed doing so was harmful to American democracy. 

When faced with questions regarding Facebook’s influence on the ethnic cleansing campaign in Myanmar, Zuckerberg stressed the difficulty of building systems that can identify harmful rhetoric before tangible consequences occur, particularly regarding seemingly innocuous language used as “innuendo” to incite violence. He referenced “unfortunate enforcement mistakes” and this difficulty in recognizing harmful speech. Military officials in Myanmar used Facebook to spread hateful rhetoric against the Rohingya Muslim minority. Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook failed to address this use of its platform quickly enough. Zuckerberg noted that, while this use of Facebook troubled him greatly, he wanted to continue allowing people to interact with or condemn controversial statements and opinions in a public forum, even if that means not censoring language that some groups would deem harmful or dangerous. 

Facebook played a critical role in facilitating the spread of misinformation during the 2016 presidential election, and the company must find a difficult balance between creating a platform that allows for the democratic value of freedom of expression and the growing definition of what constitutes hate speech or dangerous sentiment. Zuckerberg made clear in his speech on October 17 that Facebook’s goal would continue to be the support of online communities and the sharing of opinions and experiences and to prioritize free speech. 

He closed his speech by saying, “I believe that more people’s voices will eventually help us work through these issues together and write a new chapter in history—where from all our individual voices and perspectives, we can bring the world closer together.”