Pelosi Accuses Facebook of Enabling Russian Interference & 'Lying to the People'
House speaker lashes out over viral videos in which she appears drunk
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Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has lashed out at Facebook, accusing the social media giant of being run by "willing enablers" of Russian election interference who are "lying to the people," according to reports.
Pelosi slammed Mark Zuckerberg's platform Wednesday for refusing to take down a viral video edited to make the top Democrat seem drunk and appear to slur her words.
The speaker argues that Facebook's acceptance of false information made it "willing enablers" of Russia's attempts at interference in the 2016 presidential election.
"We have said all along, 'poor Facebook, they were unwittingly exploited by the Russians'," she said during an interview with California radio station KQED.
"I think wittingly because right now they are putting up something that they know is false. I think it's wrong."
Speaker Pelosi went on to say that she "can take it," but says it proves that Facebook is "lying to the public."
"I think they have proven — by not taking down something they know is false — that they were willing enablers of the Russian interference in our election," she continued.
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Facebook refused requests to comment on Pelosi's remarks from multiple media outlets including KQED and the Washington Post.
Last week, a three-minute video from Pelosi's remarks at the Center for American Progress (CAP) conference was manipulated so her words sounded slurred and garbled.
According to USA Today, Politics WatchDog first posted the video on Facebook, which has been viewed 2.8 million times and shared over 48,000 times on that platform.
During the CAP event, Pelosi accused President Donald Trump of engaging in "a cover-up" and indicated that it may be an impeachable offense.
The doctored video was slowed to about 75% of its original speed, according to the Washington Post, which first reported on the distorted video.
The pitch has also been altered after it was slowed down to make it sound more like Pelosi's actual voice.
Around the same time as WaPo reported on a doctored video of Pelosi, President Trump shared a video montage made up of several sections from a different speech by the speaker.
The video shared by Trump hadn't been doctored, however, and showed Pelosi stuttering, and at one point, holds up two fingers as she pronounces a list of “three things” to remember.
“PELOSI STAMMERS THROUGH NEWS CONFERENCE” pic.twitter.com/1OyCyqRTuk
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 24, 2019
The video was reposted from a segment on the "Lou Dobbs Tonight" show, where Fox Business political analyst Ed Rollins said he thought the House speaker is getting "worn down."
Although Trump's video was different from the one in the Washington Post report, many Democrats and Trump critics confused the two and accused the president of doctoring videos to discredit Pelosi.
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Facebook claims it only removes content from its ecosystem that violates community standards.
However, it does not remove information posted to Facebook if it's not true.
According to the community standards, "false news" isn't taken down, but because there is "a fine line between false news and satire or opinion," Facebook instead tries to "significantly reduce its distribution by showing it lower in the News Feed."
Trump last week also shared a separate video of Pelosi, where portions of her speech at a press conference were spliced together where she was repeatedly stuttering.
Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state and former 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, last week said Trump was spreading "sexist trash" after the president shared that Pelosi video.
Clinton again confused the video with the doctored footage and accused the presdient of editing videos to attack Pelosi.
Whether Pelosi is right that Facebook should remove the video or not is debatable, but one this is for sure:
For as long as Mark Zuckerberg's company uses an algorithm to filter the information presented to its 2.38 billion users in their News Feed, then Facebook is interfering in every election, everywhere. Period.
