Maher: Facebook Shouldn’t Be Fact-Checking Political ads

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher defended Facebook refusing to fact-check political ads by stating he doesn’t want “political speech policed by the accuracy regulation departments” at social media companies.

Maher said, “Zuckerberg has decided Facebook will not be policing political speech on their site, or fact-checking any political ads. And this only applies to politics, other stuff still has rules. On Facebook, you cannot say, Pizza Hut murders puppies and puts it in the sauce. But you can say, Pizza Hut murders puppies and puts it in the sauce on orders from Bernie Sanders. And I hate to tell you, but that’s the way it should be. Do you want political speech policed by the accuracy regulation departments at Facebook and Twitter? Not me. I’m always going to come down on the side of free speech. … And figuring out when politicians are full of shit is the responsibility of the voters, and no one else. People have to build up an immunity to falsehoods. We can’t pass the buck to a referee. Because a referee is still human, and even if we used a computer to do it, Trump would say the computer was an angry Democrat.”

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