Zuckerberg says he’ll play fair if Warren is elected president
Is Mark Zuckerberg already trying to make peace with Sen. Elizabeth Warren?
In fact, Zuckerberg said as much at one of his regular all-hands meeting with Facebook employees that, on Thursday, was streamed live for the first time for anyone in the world to see.
It was a version of the types of meetings Zuckerberg has had with Facebook employees in which he answers questions on any topic that Facebook workers ask. And the openness of Thursday’s meeting was likely in response to audio leaked earlier this week from a meeting Zuckerberg held in July in which he said that he was prepared to “go to the mat” to fight for Facebook’s independence should Warren get elected president next year and seek to break up the social-networking giant.
During Thursday’s meeting, Zuckerberg said he would make sure that even if Warren becomes president, Facebook would remain unbiased toward Warren if she were to post comments on Facebook about how she believes Facebook should be broken apart.
“Even when people disagree with what I think would be good to happen in
the world, I still want to give them a voice. That’s what we’re here to do,” Zuckerberg said at the meeting. “I would rather have someone get elected even if I disagree with them on everything, which I don’t even think is the case here, than not give them the ability to say what they think.”
When asked about what he would do to remain impartial toward Warren, Zuckerberg laughed and answered, “God, try not to antagonize her further.”
Warren was, indeed, antagonized after audio of Zuckerberg’s comments from his summertime meeting leaked out.
On Tuesday, Warren took to her Twitter account on Tuesday to say, “Facebook’s anti-competitive mergers mean they face no real pressure to tackle disinformation. They won’t even do the bare minimum to improve transparency. Tech giants shouldn’t be able to wield enough power to undermine our democracy.”