Facebook Didn't Remove The Deepfake Pelosi Video, And Here's Mark Zuckerberg's Explanation

On Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook could have acted quicker to flag a manipulated video which caused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to look drunk. However, the co-founder and CEO of Facebook defended that the company decided not to remove the video and it got almost 3 million views.

Zuckerberg said that it took the system a while to flag the video and another while for fact-checkers to rate it as fake, restricting its spread on the platform. Mark Zuckerberg during the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, US, said that the video got a wider distribution than allowed in their policy.

While YouTube deleted the video, Twitter and Facebook didn’t. On Facebook version for desktop devices, there were related articles appearing next to video from fact-checkers. Users of the mobile app trying to share it also saw a notice that said fact-checkers had additional reporting about the video.

Zuckerberg’s statements surface as the social giant is still working on controlling what content stays on the site and what gets pulled down. The company was expected to release a report this week on an oversight board which it’s making to review some of the toughest decisions on content moderation.

The tech giant was heavily criticized for not removing the Pelosi video, including the lawmaker. She said that the decision to leave the video up proved that Facebook’s leaders allowed Russian interference in the US presidential election back in 2016. According to reports, Zuckerberg called Pelosi to explain the decision, but neither did she return his call nor did she want to hear the explanation.

On Wednesday, the CEO also defended that way his company handles fake news. Accordingly, it doesn’t remove fake news, it instead shows it in the lower part of the News Feed along with articles from fact-checkers. During an interview on stage, Cass Sunstein, a law professor from Harvard, was applauded by the audience as he asked Zuckerberg why Facebook doesn’t remove content which “reasonable observers” don’t know is fake.

Regarding misinformation, as per Zuckerberg, Facebook has to tread carefully due to concerns around free speech. The rule on its platform says there is a fine line between satire, opinion and fake news. Zuckerberg stated.

In addition, Facebook co-founder said that the company is now evaluating its policy relating to deepfakes. It didn’t consider the Pelosi video deepfakes. He thinks that deepfakes is different from misinformation. “The policies continue to evolve. As technology develops..we continue to think through them,” said Zuckerberg.