Over the past few weeks, he has repeatedly invoked the First Amendment to justify Facebooks controversial decision to exempt posts and paid advertisements by political candidates from its fact-checking system.
In a speech to Georgetown students last month, he claimed that the companys policies are inspired by the First Amendment.
And last week, after the Social Network director Aaron Sorkin attacked him personally in a New York Times op-ed, Zuckerberg not-so-subtly posted a quote from another Sorkin movie, The American President, to his own Facebook page: You want free speech?Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.
To many of Zuckerbergs critics, however, the First Amendmentwhich prohibits the government from abridging free speechhas nothing at all to do with a corporation like Facebook. Zuckerbergs invocation of it looks, from this perspective, like a cynical ploy to dress up business decisions in a civil rights costume.As the New Yorker tech reporter Andrew Marantz recently put it, the First Amendment would not suffer if Zuckerberg reversed course on fact checking political ads, because the power of the state would not be involved: No dissembling politicians would be arrested for their lies.
And yet the people making that point today probably wouldnt find it a terribly persuasive defense if the company began banning, say, posts in support of green energy or trans rights. The First Amendment is law, but it isnt only lawits a set of values and a way of thinking about the role speech plays in a democratic society.
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