Mark Zuckerberg, criticized for his apparent indulgence towards certain controversial messages from Donald Trump, assured Monday not to have concluded any secret agreement with the American president.
"I am aware of this speculation but let it be clear: there is no agreement of any kind," said the boss of the social network Facebook in an interview with the news site Axios. "The mere idea that there could be an agreement is actually quite ridiculous," he added.
Facebook accused of not fighting disinformation enough
Mark Zuckerberg acknowledges talking "from time to time" with the current tenant of the White House. But he also had several conversations with his predecessor Barack Obama and with other political leaders around the world, he said. Facebook is regularly criticized for not fighting problematic content and disinformation enough, and several large companies, including Starbucks, Adidas, Coca-Cola, Unilever and Ford, have recently decided to stop buying advertising space from the Internet. 'business.
Disney, usually a big Facebook customer, has also decided to join the protest movement by "drastically reducing" its promotional spending on the social network, the Wall Street Journal said on Saturday . Facebook notably decided in May to leave messages posted by Donald Trump that could discourage voting or incite violence against citizens demonstrating against racism.
Competition inquiries
The network, however, decided in June to remove advertisements published by the election campaign of Donald Trump that displayed a Nazi symbol. The Facebook boss stressed on Monday that he had not received a lot of favors from the current administration, the group having in particular been condemned in 2019 to a record fine of 5 billion dollars by the American agency for protection consumers for failing to protect the personal data of its users.
Facebook is also under investigation for interference with competition by several government agencies and, like other Internet giants, is subject to a decree calling into question a law offering digital platforms immunity from any legal action related to content published by third parties.
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