WASHINGTON — Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday gave a full-throated defense of Facebook as a champion of free expression, aiming to put the social network above politics as impeachment proceedings over President Trump and the 2020 presidential election have increasingly made his company a target. In a winding, 35-minute speech at Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall — where presidents and foreign heads of state have delivered addresses — the Facebook chief executive said the social network had been founded to give people a voice and bring them together and that critics who had assailed the company for doing so were setting a dangerous example. Invoking Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr. , the Vietnam War and the First Amendment, Mr. Zuckerberg said he saw this moment as one in which Facebook wanted to be on the proper side of history by espousing the Western ideal of free speech and democracy — rather than buckle to a politically charged environment, even if it meant being unpopular. He contrasted Facebook’s position with that of China, where Beijing controls and censors speech. “People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world — a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society,” Mr. Zuckerberg, 35, said.

Source: New York Times October 17, 2019 17:48 UTC