Hillary Clinton on Tuesday railed against Facebook for allowing the spread of “fake endorsements and outright lies” about Democrats.
While addressing the “In Defense of American Democracy” forum at George Washington University, the former secretary of state railed against so-called “deep fake” videos, in which footage is spliced together to deceptively show something completely different than what actually happened. “Remember what happened to Nancy Pelosi a few months ago? Somebody spliced words from different presentations, put them together and presented them as though it were real. And think how hard it was to convince the major tech platforms—who admitted it was fake—to take it down. Some did, but many did not. And their answer—in particular Facebook’s answer—was ‘Well we’re going to let people decide for themselves.’ How can you decide for yourself when what is presented is blatantly false and manufactured?”
She additionally bashed Facebook for allowing “Trump’s propaganda efforts” to spread unabated. “The Trump campaign is already spending hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook each week to spread fake endorsements and outright lies about Democrats. They have been doing this since after the 2017 inauguration, but it’s getting at an even higher velocity now,” Clinton said. “And even though these posts violate Facebook's stated Terms of Service, they're still up. Facebook is still paid for them. And the people who are targeted to receive them still believe them.”
