Zuckerberg Dodges Responsibility For Capitol Siege In Congressional Hearing

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified Thursday in front of a joint session of two House subcommittees on the subject of social media platforms promoting misinformation and extremist content .

Representatives repeatedly returned to the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol in their questioning, pressing Zuckerberg along with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on their responsibility for the violence.

Time and again, Zuckerberg exaggerated his companys efforts to control the spread of increasingly violent, far-right misinformation on Facebook in the run up to the riot, while avoiding taking any responsibility for Facebooks role in facilitating the planning.

Asked by Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) if their platforms bear some responsibility for disseminating disinformation related to the election and the Stop the Steal movement that culminated in the attack on the Capitol, only Dorsey offered a qualified yes.

Zuckerberg says Facebook does not bear responsibility for the Jan 6 Insurrection pic.twitter.com/0p1tQCHrpP

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Zuckerberg says Facebook does not bear responsibility for the Jan 6 Insurrection pic.twitter.com/0p1tQCHrpP
The Real Facebook Oversight Board (@FBoversight) March 25, 2021

You can take down this content, you can reduce division, you can fix this but you choose not to, Doyle said in his opening statement. You have the means, but time after time, you are picking engagement and profit over the health and safety of your users, our nation and our democracy.

In a follow-up, Doyle pressed Zuckerberg slightly, asking how its possible for you not to at least admit that Facebook played a leading role in the recruitment, planning and execution of the attack on the Capitol.

Zuckerberg responded by blaming former President Donald Trump , who for years used social media to spread lies and call for violence while Facebook largely looked the other way .

I think the responsibility lies with the people who took the actions to break the law and do the insurrection, Zuckerberg said. Secondarily, also with the people who spread that content, including the president but others as well, with repeated rhetoric over time, saying that the election was rigged and encouraging people to organize, I think that those people bear the primary responsibility as well.

Zuckerberg evaded giving a straight answer in subsequent questioning, telling Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) that, while the company has further work to do on moderation, his position on Facebooks role in fomenting insurrection remained unchanged.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) presses Facebooks Mark Zuckeberg to admit that Facebook played a role in fomenting extremism that led to the Capitol attack.

He admits the company has further work to do on moderation. pic.twitter.com/iBOfOruMs6

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Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) presses Facebooks Mark Zuckeberg to admit that Facebook played a role in fomenting extremism that led to the Capitol attack.

He admits the company has further work to do on moderation. pic.twitter.com/iBOfOruMs6
The Recount (@therecount) March 25, 2021

Zuckerberg also defended Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg for claiming, less than a week after the violent siege, that the riot was not largely organized on Facebook, but on other platforms that dont have our abilities to stop hate, dont have our standards and dont have our transparency.

A week after Sandbergs comments, a report by Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog group that oversees the Tech Transparency Project, concluded the opposite was true.

Not only is [Sandbergs] assertion false, the report said, but it ignores the fact that Facebook spent the past year allowing election conspiracies and far-right militia activity to proliferate on its platform, laying the groundwork for the broader radicalization that fueled the Capitol insurrection in the first place.