CNN Reporter Grills Zuckerberg on Soros Outrage, Facebook Scrutiny: ‘Shouldn’t Your Power Be Checked?’

CNN reporter Laurie Segall sat down with Mark Zuckerberg and grilled him over the new scrutiny into Facebook following a recent bombshell New York Times report.

Segall started out by asking Zuckerberg, “Let’s look at did you and other leaders try to minimize Russia in spreading propaganda on the platform?”

Zuckerberg said no and insisted that they’re “very focused on this” now and anyone who says they “haven’t made a lot of progress” is incorrect.

When Segall asked if he regrets not being more transparent about Russian meddling, Zuckerberg said, “I wish that we understood the issues sooner. I wish we understood it before 2016, before the Russians tried to do these information operations in the first place.”

One part of the Times report that garnered outrage was this section concerning the activities of a firm employed by Facebook:

While Mr. Zuckerberg has conducted a public apology tour in the last year, Ms. Sandberg has overseen an aggressive lobbying campaign to combat Facebook’s critics, shift public anger toward rival companies and ward off damaging regulation. Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tapped its business relationships, lobbying a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic.

Segall raised the issue to Zuckerberg and asked, “Does that strike you as stooping low?”

Zuckerberg uncomfortably responded that he “wasn’t particularly happy about that piece of it.”

At one point Segall brought up the massive influence Facebook and Zuckerberg himself wields, saying, “You are CEO and chairman of Facebook. That’s an extraordinary amount of power given that you rule a kingdom of 2 billion people digitally, essentially. Shouldn’t your power be checked?”

“I always talk about how we need to partner with governments around the world and other companies and non-profits and other sectors,” he said. “So yes, I don’t think fundamentally we’re going to be able to address these issues by ourselves.”

He also made it clear he doesn’t plan to step down as chairman.

You can watch the whole thing above, via CNN.

[image via screengrab]