Yahoo News Twitter boss Jack Dorsey defends decision to fact-check Trump after Mark Zuckerberg criticism
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has hit back at comments made by Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg in a row over fact-checking.
It came after Mr Zuckerberg said his influential platform, which reportedly has 2.5 billion global users, “shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth” in fact-checking everything people say online.
The row followed an incident where Twitter marked one of the president's tweets — making unsubstantiated claims about widespread fraud in absentee postal voting, known as mail-in ballots in the US — as misleading for the first time.
His since-deleted post also repeating his often made "rigged election" allegations was tagged with a Twitter alert label telling other users to “Get the facts about mail-in ballots”.
He told Fox News: "We have a different policy, I think, than Twitter on this.
"I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn't be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online.
Mr Zuckerberg added: “In general, private companies probably shouldn't be, especially these platform companies, shouldn't be in the position of doing that.”
Now Mr Dorsey, whose microblogging site has some 330 million users, has said the fact-check label was added to give “more transparency”.
Writing on Twitter, he said: “Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that’s me. Please leave our employees out of this.
"We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make. This does not make us an ‘arbiter of truth’.
"Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves.
“More transparency from us is critical so folks can clearly see the why behind our actions."
Studies have not shown evidence backing the president’s claims of large absentee voting fraud, with CNN reporting that one law professor found just 31 such instances between 2000 and 2014.
Postal voting is expected to increase dramatically in the November presidential elections, with Trump seeking a second term, due to concerns about in-person voting amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Now the White House has said President Trump, a prolific Twitter user with more than 80 million followers on his personal account, has said he will sign an executive order — a diktat not requiring congressional approval — targeting social media firms.
The order is expected to establish a mechanism allowing Americans to report political censorship or bias, and review of laws protecting social media firms from the material posted by users.
In the early hours today, he again tweeted accusations that “Big Tech” was trying to “silence” conservative opinion.
Facebook also funds a fact-checking programme, but when Mr Trump posted the same comments there about postal votes it was not labelled or removed.
The social network said the post had not broken its rules due to its belief that “people should be able to have a robust debate about the electoral process”.
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