WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday strongly rebuked Facebook, saying the company’s refusal to take down altered videos of her demonstrated how the social network contributed to misinformation and enabled Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“We have said all along, poor Facebook, they were unwittingly exploited by the Russians,” Ms. Pelosi said in an interview with the public radio station KQED. “I think wittingly, because right now they are putting up something that they know is false.”
Ms. Pelosi, a Democrat, is the most powerful politician to accuse Facebook of knowingly allowing disinformation spread through its service during the last presidential election. Many other politicians have stopped short of that, saying only that the company should have acted faster to stop it.
The comments with the radio station, which is based in San Francisco and covers much of Ms. Pelosi’s district in Northern California, heighten the clash between lawmakers and Facebook. Officials from both parties have criticized Facebook for acting too slowly to police harmful content, such as a live stream of a shooting this March in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The company is also regularly attacked by Republicans, such as when it suspended accounts of far-right figures including Alex Jones of Infowars. President Trump and conservatives like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas have accused Facebook of promoting content from liberal-leaning news organizations and making posts by conservative media outlets and politicians harder to find. Facebook has denied those accusations.
The altered videos of Ms. Pelosi first appeared online last week and spread widely on Facebook and other social networks. In the edited video, Ms. Pelosi’s speech is slowed down and slurred, making her appear drunk. President Trump shared the video last Thursday, inflaming the debate over Facebook’s moderation of content and how its murky rules for taking down content have contributed to the spread of toxic and false information.
In her comments on Wednesday, Ms. Pelosi said the company’s unwillingness to take down the misleading videos showed that Facebook was “lying to the public.”
“I think they have proven — by not taking down something they know is false — that they were willing enablers of the Russian interference in our election,” she added.
Facebook declined to comment on Ms. Pelosi’s remarks. But it has defended its decision not to remove the videos. Facebook does not require posts to be true, but it sometimes slows the spread of certain posts that may be false, such as the video of Ms. Pelosi.
“Once the video was fact-checked as false, we dramatically reduced its distribution,” the company has said about the videos. “Speed is critical to this system, and we continue to improve our response. People who see the video in feed, try to share it from feed, or already shared it are alerted that it’s false.”
Facebook also said the altered videos of Ms. Pelosi now run with a fact-check box that labels the content as false.
Follow Cecilia Kang on Twitter: @ceciliakang.
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