Zuckerberg Responds to Trump Branding Facebook as ‘Anti-Trump’

Facebook to hand over 3000 copies of ads bought by a Russian agency to US Congress on Monday, 2 October.

(From left to right) Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

Days after Facebook agreed to cooperate with Congress on its investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, President Donald Trump criticised the social network for being "anti-Trump."

Facebook would provide the contents of 3,000 ads bought by a Russian agency to congressional investigators on Monday and make political advertising on its platform more transparent as promised by Zuckerberg earlier. Along with the copies of the ads, related data on whom the ads were targeted at and how much each ad cost would also be transferred to the several committees investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to Trump's allegation on his Facebook page last week, saying that while Trump says Facebook is against him, liberals allege that Facebook helped Trump win, but the social media platform has been a communicative space for many people to discuss several ideas during the polls.

He said that Facebook helped as many as 2 million people to register their vote, which is bigger than any campaign – be it for Trump or Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

We ran “get out the vote” efforts that helped as many as two million people register to vote. To put that in perspective, that’s bigger than the get out the vote efforts of the Trump and Clinton campaigns put together. That’s a big deal.

Read the full post below:

In his post, he also apologised for dismissing the idea that misinformation may have changed the outcome of the election, adding that Facebook will do its part to "defend against nation states attempting to spread misinformation and subvert elections."

Earlier, in a live broadcast, Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California, Zuckerberg said the company would now make it possible for anyone to see any political ads that run on Facebook, no matter whom they target. The changes would help address concerns that governments, including Russia, are using Facebook ads to meddle in other countries’ elections.

(With inputs from AP)

Also Read: Zuckerberg’s 9 Points to Prevent Political Meddling on Facebook