Representative Angie Craig Slams Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for Platform’s Failed Content Monitoring Policies

WASHINGTON, DC — Today, U.S. Representative Angie Craig questioned Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the social media company's inconsistent and ineffective policies on monitoring hate speech. The hearing, entitled "Disinformation Nation: Social Media's Role in Promoting Extremism and Misinformation," focused on big tech's role in generating and amplifying false and inflammatory information to its online audiences.

At the hearing, Representative Craig, the first LGBTQ Member of Congress from Minnesota, raised a recent incident where Facebook removed a video of Illinois Congresswoman Marie Newman putting up a Transgender flag outside of her office and labeled it as "hate speech." Meanwhile, Facebook's monitoring policies did nothing to label or remove a transphobic post from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, which targeted Newman, who is the mother of a trans child.

"According to Representative Newman, the reason Facebook gave for taking down the video was that it violated Facebook's community standards on hate speech and inferiority. Does that seem right to you?" Craig asked.

"Meanwhile," Craig continued, "Across the hall, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia posted a video to Facebook. Her video showed her putting up a transphobic sign so that Representative Newman, the mother of a trans child could, ‘look at it every time she opens her door.'"

A full video of Representative Craig's questioning of Zuckerberg is available here.