Hillary Clinton 'disappointed' in Facebook, big tech for not doing more to support US election integrity
Former presidential candidate and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she is “disappointed” in Facebook and other big U.S. technology companies on Thursday, for failing to do more to support free, fair and uninfluenced elections in the United States.
During a speech at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford’s School of Public Policy, Clinton said she is “very worried” about foreign interference in U.S. election systems.
“I’m also really disappointed in a lot of the tech companies and I’ll mention Facebook because they’re the most influential,” Clinton said. “More people in the world get their news from Facebook than any combination of other news sources.”
Clinton said that Facebook allows individuals or groups to buy an ad that is “totally untrue” and the company won’t take them down. She also said they won’t take down “manufactured deep fake[s].”
“So how are voters supposed to know? I don’t know, I’m a voter, how am I supposed to know?” she asked. “We’re talking about really sophisticated propaganda.”
Facebook did not immediately return FOX Business’ request for comment in regard to Clinton’s statements.
Clinton pointed to four main points of concern that she said she warns current 2020 candidates about, given they could derail campaigns and are completely beyond individual control. Those are:
- Voter suppression and the purging of voters
- Stolen information from you or your campaign that is weaponized
- A steady stream of outrageous, untrue stories fed to people’s Facebook feeds and social media accounts
- Actual election interference
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The former secretary of state also warned that the Russians are still in our election systems.
“All I want is a free, fair, transparent, honest election not interfered with by Russians or anybody else, so that the choice of the American people is actually the choice the American people made.”
Facebook has come under scrutiny for failing to protect user data during the 2016 presidential election, after it allowed an authorized third party to access the personal information of tens of millions of users. The social media giant was recently fined $5 billion over those privacy abuses by the Federal Trade Commission and is facing ongoing regulatory probes from the FTC and lawmakers.