April 2020] THE "WEAPONIZATION" OF FACEBOOK 815 INTRODUCTION “Across the board, we [Facebook] have a responsibility to not just build tools, but to make sure that they’re used for good. It will take some time to work through all the changes we need to make across the company, but I’m committed to getting this right. . . . [S]o now we have to go through all of our relationships and make sure we’re taking a broad enough view of our responsibility.”1 In his opening statement at a joint Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committee hearing, Facebook Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Zuckerberg directly claimed responsibility for issues regarding hate speech, harassment, and misinformation on Facebook’s social media platform.2 At that same ten-hour hearing, Zuckerberg used the word “responsibility” forty-one times.3 With these words, the Facebook CEO rejected a longstanding argument used by companies in Silicon Valley for years—that social media “platforms aren’t responsible for the content posted by” their users.4 Over the past year, Facebook in particular has been criticized for failing to address the misuses of its platform.5 In the United States, domestic and international users spread fake news and fueled divisive online debates during the highly contentious 2016 election.6 Most notably, Russia utilized Facebook to carry out its disinformation campaign, designed to sow seeds of distrust in the United States.7 Internationally, users in Western Europe spread anti-refugee hate speech through posts and re-sharing of posts on Facebook, leading to an increased number of attacks on refugees.8 As Zuckerberg himself stated, 1. Transcript of Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate Hearing, WASH. POST (Apr. 10, 2018, 7:25 PM), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/10/transcript-of-mark-zuckerbergs-senatehearing/ [hereinafter Transcript]. 2. Id. 3. Id. 4. Matt Weinberger, Mark Zuckerberg Just Renounced a Core Piece of Silicon Valley Wisdom—and It Could Come Back to Bite Facebook, BUS. INSIDER (Apr. 11, 2018, 1:30 PM), https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-is-responsible-for-the-content-on-its-platform2018-4. 5. See, e.g., Zak Doffman, 1.5m Users Hit by New Facebook Privacy Breach as Extent of Data Misuse Exposed, FORBES (Apr. 18, 2019, 3:35 AM), https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/04/18/facebookillegally-harvested-data-from-1-5m-users-as-it-leveraged-its-data-machine/#39f186386a2e; David Ingram, Facebook Critics Want Regulation, Investigation After Data Misuse, REUTERS (Mar. 17, 2018, 6:33 PM), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica-regulati/facebook-critics-want-regulationinvestigation-after-data-misuse-idUSKCN1GU01A; Casey Newton, Facebook Is Losing Control of the Narrative—and Maybe the Platform, VERGE (Mar. 20, 2018, 1:21 AM), https://www.theverge.com/ 2018/3/20/17140490/facebook-cambridge-analytica-data-crisis. 6. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election, 31 J. ECON. PERSP. 211, 212 (2017). 7. Scott Shane & Mark Mazzetti, The Plot to Subvert an Election: Unraveling the Russia Story So Far, N.Y. TIMES (Sept. 20, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/20/us/politics/russia-interferenceelection-trump-clinton.html. 8. Amanda Taub & Max Fisher, Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests, N.Y. TIMES (Aug. 21, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/world/europe/facebook-refugeeattacks-germany.html.