Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg fired back Wednesday at President Donald Trump's "collusion" claim, writing in a post that his social network played a different role "from what most are saying."
Zuckerberg was responding to a claim Trump made Wednesday morning on Twitter in which he called Facebook "anti-Trump" and "fake news."
Facebook was always anti-Trump.The Networks were always anti-Trump hence,Fake News, @nytimes(apologized) & @WaPo were anti-Trump. Collusion?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2017
Zuckerberg took to his own platform Wednesday to reject Trump's claims, adopting a "both sides" defense in the process.
"Trump says Facebook is against him," he started his 372-word post. "Liberals say we helped Trump. Both sides are upset about ideas and content they don't like. That's what running a platform for all ideas looks like."
Trump likely brought up Facebook because of reports alleging that Russia used the platform to influence the 2016 election. While Zuckerberg did not address the recent news, he did acknowledge that Facebook helped spread misinformation.
“After the election, I made a comment that I thought the idea misinformation on Facebook changed the outcome of the election was a crazy idea,” Zuckerberg said. “Calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it. This is too important an issue to be dismissive.”
“But the data we have has always shown that our broader impact – from giving people a voice to enabling candidates to communicate directly to helping millions of people vote – played a far bigger role in this election,” he added.
Facebook has been complying with Congress' investigation into Russia's election interference. The network has handed over Russia-backed ads that were purchased during the closing months of the campaign.
Read Zuckerberg's full response to Trump below:
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