Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, on Wednesday dismissed Donald Trump’s complaint that the platform was biased against him and defended his company’s role in last year’s American election.
The social media pioneer has been on the defensive for months about allegations that Facebook helped spread fake news and that Russian agents bought advertisements as part of an attempt to sway the election outcome.
In a post published on Facebook, Mr Zuckerberg said both sides of the debate were angry at him.
“Trump says Facebook is against him. 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,” he wrote.
He listed the positive impacts of the site during the election – including get out the vote efforts and the fact that every candidate had a page to promote their own ideas and interact directly with voters.
But he admitted he had underestimated the impact of misinformation on the election.
“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,” he wrote. “Calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it. This is too important an issue to be dismissive.”
His comments came in response to a tweet posted by the American President on Wednesday morning in which he suggested the platform was “anti-Trump”.
Facebook is under intense pressure to do more to help stop the spread of “fake news”.
It is also included into Congressional and federal investigations into Russian attempts to influence the election.
Facebook on Wednesday was asked to testify before two separate Congressional committees.
