Sasse Grills Zuckerberg: If You’re Going to Police Hate Speech, Can You Define It? By Mairead McArdle
Sasse Grills Zuckerberg: If You’re Going to Police Hate Speech, Can You Define It?
A Republican senator challenged Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s hate speech policies during his congressional testimony Tuesday, asking the Facebook boss if he could define it.
Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) said he worried about policies that are “less than First Amendment full-spirit embracing in my view.”
“I worry about a world where when you go from violent groups to hate speech in a hurry,” Sasse told Zuckerberg. “Facebook may decide it needs to police a whole bunch of speech that I think America may be better off not having policed by one company that has a really big and powerful platform.”
“Can you define hate speech?” he asked.
Zuckerberg said it would be hard to pin down a specific definition, and mentioned speech “calling for violence” as something Facebook does not tolerate.
“I’m worried about the psychological categories around speech,” Sasse interjected. “We see this happening on college campuses all across the country. It’s dangerous.”
Comments are closed.
