New Delhi: Facebook Chief Mark Zuckerberg has rung warning bells on possible civil unrest ahead of US Presidential election 2020 slated for November. He expressed concerns that with results taking weeks to be finalised, there may be a risk on civil unrest given the nation is so divided.
He also described safeguards being adopted by Facebook to curb misinformation and voter suppression to avoid a rerun of what happened four years ago (2016 presidential elections), AFP reported.
“I’m worried that with our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or weeks to be finalized there is a risk of civil unrest,” the foreign news agency quoted Zuckerberg as saying. “Given this, companies like ours need to go well beyond what we’ve done before.”
This also comes as the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google facing a grilling by Republican senators making unfounded allegations that the tech giants show anti-conservative bias.
The Senate Commerce Committee had on Wednesday summoned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai to testify for a hearing. The executives agreed to appear remotely after being threatened with subpoenas.
With the presidential election looming, Republicans led by President Donald Trump have thrown a barrage of grievances at Big Tech’s social media platforms, which they accuse without evidence of deliberately suppressing conservative, religious and anti-abortion views.
Social media giants are also under heavy scrutiny for their efforts to police misinformation about the election. Twitter and Facebook have slapped a misinformation label on content from the president, who has around 80 million followers. Trump has raised the baseless prospect of mass fraud in the vote-by-mail process.
(With PTI inputs)