Warren Promises Not To Spread Fake News Online

Senator Elizabeth Warren does an interview in the spin room after the sixth 2020 U.S. Democratic presidential candidates campaign debate at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, U.S., December 19, 2019. REUTERS/Kyle Grillot
January 30, 2020 Blog Brand: The Buzz

Warren Promises Not To Spread Fake News Online

She wants to punish tech companies for the same.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren promised Wednesday not to spread fake news online in a tweet publicizing her plan to hold big tech companies responsible for spreading misinformation.

Warren said in a plan on her website that she will push for “new laws that impose tough civil and criminal penalties” on companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, among others. She also said President Donald Trump employed such misinformation during the 2016 election.

The Massachusetts Democrat also made a promise.

“So today, I’m making a pledge: I will not knowingly use or spread disinformation to benefit my own candidacy or damage others. And I will fight disinformation aimed at my campaign, my opponents, and voters,” Warren wrote in a tweet announcing her plan.

Warren’s pledge comes several months after she published an advertisement on Facebook that carried false information.

“Facebook changed their ads policy to allow politicians to run ads with known lies—explicitly turning the platform into a disinformation-for-profit machine. This week, we decided to see just how far it goes,” she tweeted in October 2019.

She then added a screenshot of her claiming Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg endorsed Trump. The social media company is “deliberately allowing a candidate to intentionally lie to the American people” rather than actually endorsing the president, the ad noted.

Warren, a Democrat who is running for president in 2020, told her Twitter followers that the president and Facebook are brainstorming ways to thwart the will of the people. She was referring to reports showing that Trump and Zuckerberg met Sept. 20, 2019, at the Oval Office.

Warren has not responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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Image: Reuters.