Zuckerberg Mentor Roger McNamee Calls for Criminal Probe of Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg frowning
Getty/Chip Somodevilla

At this year’s Web Summit conference, early Facebook investor and mentor to Mark Zuckerberg, Roger McNamee, called for a criminal probe into Facebook. One of McNamee’s six proposed criminal investigations of Mark Zuckerberg’s company is that the company “allowed human trafficking on its platform and was ‘paid to enable it to happen.'”

Business Insider reports that speaking at this year’s Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, longtime Facebook investor and mentor to Mark Zuckerberg, Roger McNamee, called for a criminal probe of the tech giant. In fact, McNamee called for six different criminal investigations and prison sentences for executives found responsible.

American businessman, venture capitalist and former Facebook investor Roger Burroughs McNamee poses during a photo session in Paris, on September 19, 2019. (Photo by JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images)

The Web Summit conference, which hosts as many as 80,000 people some years, was opened this year by far-left “whistleblower” Frances Haugen, who told an audience of 20,000 that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg should step down.

"Whistleblower"Frances Haugen dishes on Facebook

“Whistleblower”Frances Haugen dishes on Facebook (Jim Watson/Getty)

“They were putting lives in jeopardy … Facebook is currently prioritizing content in the news feed that has a side effect of prioritizing and amplifying the most extreme and divisive content,” she said. She was met with a huge round of applause.

The next day, McNamee sat down with Guardian journalist Jane Martinson before an audience of around 1,000. McNamee has been attempting to raise concerns about Facebook’s actions for years. In 2018, McNamee stated in an interview that Facebook is designed to make users angry and scared, stating: “All the content is stuff that you like, right? It’s what they [Facebook] think you like. But what it really is, is stuff that serves their business model and their profits. And making you angry, making you afraid, is really good for Facebook’s business. It is not good for America. It’s not good for the users of Facebook.”

Speaking at the Web Summit, McNamee outlined the six areas where he believes “felony investigations are warranted.” Business Insider reports that McNamee’s list includes:

  • The US Securities and Exchange Commission should look at Facebook’s failure to disclose information about its business.
  • Facebook allowed human trafficking on its platform and was “paid to enable it to happen”
  • Facebook’s management was “complicit” in the “Stop the Steal” campaign which led to the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill.
  • The company is the subject of a state attorney general investigation in Texas into whether Facebook worked with Google to fix prices. “The standard penalty for that is three and a half years in prison for all of the executives and it is the clearest cut case of price fixing in the United States in decades,” he railed.

McNamee did not include the final two areas he believe should be investigated by the federal government on his list.

Read more at Business Insider 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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