Facebook has recently come under great pressure from politicians and media outlets to ban political advertisements on the platform. However, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has defended his decision not to do so in the name of free speech, Eurasia Diary reports Sputnik.

 

English-American actor Sacha Baron Cohen has blasted a number of the most prominent US social media and search engine companies and their executives, accusing them of facilitating hate speech and being “the greatest propaganda machine in history”.

 

Speaking in front of the Anti-Defamation League, America’s oldest non-governmental Jewish organization on Thursday, Cohen criticised the heads of Google, Twitter, and YouTube for failing to protect democracy and facilitating violence. He levelled his fiercest swipe against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whom the actor slammed for refusing to ban Holocaust deniers from social media and promoting fallacious political ads.

 

“Under this twisted logic, if Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Hitler to post 30-second ads on his ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem’”,  the Borat star said. “So here’s a good standard and practice: Facebook, start fact-checking political ads before you run them, stop micro-targeted lies immediately, and when the ads are false, give back the money and don’t publish them”.

 

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