Dr. Monika Bickert:

Let me be clear. It is not that we think it is okay for people to lie. We think that when people come to Facebook freedom of expression is one of the best ways the truth comes out. The fact we do not think Facebook should be the truth police for the entire world and that we should not determine for citizens what they shall and shall not see in terms of truthfulness from their politicians does not mean we dismiss the importance of combating disinformation. There are several things we do to combat false statements on Facebook. First, we go after fake accounts that the data have told us time and again are disproportionately more likely to be sharing disinformation. Second, we disrupt the financial incentives. Most disinformation, and this includes political disinformation, is shared to make a profit. It leads to ad farms. We have gotten much tougher on that. Finally, for content that is around the border and run in somebody's real name, we now have a process for allowing third party fact checkers to check that information. When it comes to the direct speech of a politician, we do not think it is appropriate for any private company to interfere between that politician's speech and the citizenry and saying this is true and this is false.