Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan have responded to the requests by the over 270 scientists at the ChanZuckerbberg Initiative who called out on Zuck to curb misinformation.
The scientists who are funded by the billionaire’s initiative said Facebook should not be letting President Donald Trump use the social media platform to “spread both misinformation and incendiary statements.” The letter called the spread of “deliberate misinformation and visive language” contrary to their goals of using technology to eradicate disease, improve childhood education and reform the justice system.
In response to this, Zuckerberg and his wife wrote a letter to the scientists acknowledging their complaint. “We are deeply shaken and disgusted by President Trump’s divisive and incendiary rhetoric at a time when our nation so desperately needs unity. This is an extraordinarily painful inflection point our nation’s story, particularly for the Black community and our Black colleagues, who have lived with the impacts of systemic racism for generations,” they said on the latter.
They still maintained that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Facebook are “entirely separate and independent organizations who share the same co-leader.”
Mark Zuckerberg wrote a lengthy post on Facebook where he laid down the various policies that his company will review to help advance racial justice and more. His views on his reluctance on fact-checking what Donald Trump’s statements on his platform have been met with heavy criticism. This compounds to the history of Facebook with the Cambridge Analytica scandal that damaged Facebook’s reputation due to the alleged interference with the United States election.
