Politico's Glenn Thrush: Why Isn't Facebook Banning Groups That “Knowingly Push False And Hateful Contents?”

Thrush: Why Aren't Social Media Groups “Coming Up With A More Serious Strategy For Either Labeling Or Banning Groups That Knowingly Push False And Hateful Content?”

From the December 5 edition of MSNBC’s Meet The Press Daily:

Video file

GLENN THRUSH: First of all, I think I know where I'm going to be having dinner on Sunday night, which is Comet Pizza. The other thing about it is the sewage goes through a pipe. The social media sites are for profit enterprises. You've got Reddit, you’ve got Facebook, and you have Twitter. Explain to me why, is there a constitutional right to put potentially inflammatory incitements of violence on these sites? Why aren't Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, and Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook coming up with a more serious strategy for either labeling or banning groups that knowingly push false and hateful contents on their sites? 

PETER ALEXANDER (HOST): The challenge to try to keep up with the pace of this information right now, it's worth noting that for Reddit's part, they banned the pizza gate discussion going forward. I'm curious for your take on this. Donald Trump obviously Inforwars, we're familiar with that sort of popular website spewing off a lot of conspiracy theories as well. Even Alex Jones, the founder of Infowars, you know, spoke proudly about how, I said something, and Donald Trump spouted it just a couple days later. 

[…]

THRUSH: The thing we have to realize, Facebook is not -- the web is the web. People can say what they want on the web. That's the larger pool. Facebook and Twitter, newspapers are curated. Television is curated. These are channels of information. The question is, and we need to have a really significant national discussion on this. What is social media? What are the responsibilities of the owners of social media, and what are the ground rules?

Previously:

CNN Panel Highlights “How Far Fake News Can Go" When Amplified By People Like Trump Adviser Michael Flynn

How Fake News Articles Fabricated A Child Trafficking Story And Led To Death Threats For A Pizzeria

Fox News' Shepard Smith Examines Facebook's Fake News Problem