Mark Zuckerberg's testimony before the House Financial Services Committee today is not going as smoothly as a video of a puppy cuddling with a baby on Facebook.
Committee chairwoman Maxine Waters, a Democratic Congresswoman from California, drilled down about the social media platform's stance on political ads-and their truthfulness. That line of tough questioning led the Facebook CEO to defend letting politicians lie on Facebook.
"Are you telling me . . . you plan on doing no fact-checking on political ads?" Waters asked.
"Our policy is that we do not fact-check politicians' speech . . . We believe that in a democracy, it is important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying," he replied.
Waters also brought up the question of whether Facebook should be broken up. The main focus of the hearing is Facebook's planned cryptocurrency Libra. It began at 10 a.m. ET with Zuckerberg as the sole witness.
On Monday, Facebook announced plans to curb election interference, including fighting foreign interference and reducing misinformation.
You can watch the key part of the exchange in the embedded video below:
Rep. Waters: "Are you telling me...you plan on doing no fact checking on political ads?"
Zuckerberg: "Our policy is that we do not fact check politician's speech....we believe that in a democracy it is important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying." pic.twitter.com/dYDaM1d0cd
- CSPAN (@cspan) October 23, 2019
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