Political pressure is gradually forcing Facebook executives to take responsibility for the content that appears on the social network, at this point mainly for the advertising. So far, they are doing a good job of avoiding the real subject.
On Wednesday, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg addressed the recent discovery that ads on Facebook could be targeted at "Jew haters" -- or, rather, at the small number of people who self-describe as such. Fixing that required temporarily ceasing all targeting by profession. Sandberg promised a new level of human oversight so that new targets would require approval from an actual Facebook employee.
On Thursday, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg weighed in on a scandal with potentially more dire consequences for his company -- Russian influence operations through Facebook during the 2016 presidential election. Facebook accounts, apparently set up in Russia, purchased some 3,000 ads during the U.S. election campaign. Zuckerberg explained that this took place "programmatically through our apps and website without the advertiser ever speaking to anyone at Facebook."
Zuckerberg insisted that Facebook wasn't going to police content: "We don't check what people say before they say it, and frankly, I don't think our society should want us to. Freedom means you don't have to ask permission first, and that by default you can say what you want." Zuckerberg offered some policy changes on ads, similar to Sandberg's, such as more human oversight, greater transparency when it comes to who's paying for "political ads" and what ads an entity is running.
