During a September 2019 speech in Washington, D.C., Facebook’s global policy and communications chief Nick Clegg gave an ardent defense of the company’s policy to not fact-check politicians, saying that it wasn’t the social network’s role to “intervene when politicians speak.”
Behind the scenes that summer, some of Facebook’s employees had argued just the opposite, warning that exempting politicians from fact-checking “is protecting content that is especially likely to deceive,” according to an internal presentation reviewed by The Information and two people familiar with the matter. They cited a survey they did that found Facebook users were more likely to believe false information if it is shared by a politician.
