During a hearing today before the Committee on the Judiciary, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the “Stop The Steal” group was censored in order to prevent “violence or civil unrest.”
In a hearing today before the Committee on the Judiciary titled “Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) about the #StopTheSteal campaign and Facebook groups that began as questions were raised around the election results.
Feinstein asked Zuckerberg: “After President Trump falsely claimed that the election was being stolen, a group called Stop The Steal was started on Facebook. It grew to more than 300,000 users in less than a day making it one of the fastest-growing groups, I understand, in Facebook history. You shut the group down but substantial damage already had been done. Trump supporters, some of them armed with assault weapons, held Stop The Steal rallies outside election offices. In Philadelphia, two armed supporters who had traveled from Virginia were arrested on their way to the cities vote-counting center. Here’s the question and this is a tough one: What are your concerns about the spread of misinformation, no matter how innocent it is, or it is not innocent like Trump’s claims about the election, that they may incite violence?”
Zuckerberg responded: “Senator I am very worried about this, especially any misinformation or content that could incite violence and during such a volatile period like this one of our top priorities is making sure that people don’t use our platform to organize any violence or civil unrest. And that was the basis under which we took down that group because there were a number of members that were posting potentially violent or encouraging violent comments that violated our policies.”
Breitbart News reporter Allum Bokhari previously reported on Facebook’s removal of the Stop The Steal group, writing:
The mainstream media ran several articles about Stop the Steal, attacking its members as purveyors of “misinformation” and criticizing Facebook for not censoring the page quickly enough.
One journalist even claimed, bizarrely, that allowing Republican voters to use Facebook to organize rallies in defense of fair elections would somehow lead to violence.
“Facebook is, once again, doing an absolutely atrocious job at curtailing election-related disinformation and violent rhetoric,” said Rolling Stone reporter EJ Dickson on Twitter
“Its history of being reactive rather than proactive may very well result in the platform having blood on its hands.”
Read more about today’s hearing at Breitbart Tech here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
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