Nationals Take Control of World Series; Facebook's CEO Grilled over Political Ads Policy.
BERMAN: Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg grilled by lawmakers for more than six hours on how the social media giant handles political ads and what it is doing to fight election interference. CNN's Cristina Alesci is live in Washington. And he had to know these questions were coming and yet, Cristina, and yet.</s>CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: And yet at times the hearing was painful to watch, John. That is because this was supposed to be a hearing about Facebook's ambitions in developing a digital currency and a digital wallet. But what it turned into was a skewering for what lawmakers see as a lack of Facebook's ability or really a willingness to police misinformation on its platform. That raises the question, if Facebook can't police information on its platform and really protect privacy on its platform, how can the American public or the government really trust it with something as sensitive as financial data. Listen.</s>ALESCI (voice over): Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg facing the fury of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle in grueling questioning for six hours on Capitol Hill. Democrats quickly zeroing in on the social media giant's new political advertising policy.</s>REP. MAXINE WATERS (D-CA): You announce that Facebook would not be doing fact checking on political ads giving any one Facebook labels a politician a platform to lie, mislead, and misinform the American people, which will also allow Facebook to sell more ads. Your claim to promote freedom of speech does not ring true.</s>ALESCI: Zuckerberg struggling to clarify what the new policy would do.</s>REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): Would I be able to run advertisements on Facebook targeting Republicans in primaries saying that they voted for the green new deal?</s>MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO, FACEBOOK: I -- I don't know the answer to that off the top of my head. I think probably.</s>OCASIO-CORTEZ: So you don't know if I'll be able to do that?</s>ZUCKERBERG: I think probably.</s>OCASIO-CORTEZ: Do you see a potential problem here with a complete lack of fact checking on political advertisements?</s>ALESCI: Facebook says it does not fact check any political ads. Instead, it relies on third party fact checkers.</s>OCASIO-CORTEZ: So you won't take down lies or you will take down lies? I think that's just a pretty simple yes or no.</s>ZUCKERBERG: Congresswoman, I -- in --</s>OCASIO-CORTEZ: I'm not talking about spin, I'm talking about actual disinformation.</s>ZUCKERBERG: Yes, in most -- in a democracy --</s>OCASIO-CORTEZ: OK.</s>ZUCKERBERG: I believe that people should be able to see for themselves what politicians that they may or may not vote for are saying and judge their character for themselves.</s>OCASIO-CORTEZ: So you won't take them down? So you won't take -- you may flag that it's wrong, but you won't take it down?</s>ALESCI: Lawmakers repeatedly grilling the 35-year-old billionaire about Facebook's handling of election interference and data privacy.</s>ZUCKERBERG: I get that I'm not the ideal messenger for this right now. You know, we faced a lot of issues over the past few years.</s>ALESCI: One Republican accusing Democrats of, quote, bullying Facebook to be a fact checker.</s>REP. ANDY BARR (R-KY): Will you commit that Facebook will not sensor any political ad placed on your platform or in support of President Donald Trump?</s>ZUCKERBERG: We believe that people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.</s>ALESCI: Zuckerberg also questioned about this deep fake video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that slows down her speech, making it seem like she's slurring her words. Zuckerberg admits that it took Facebook too long to respond to it and acknowledged Facebook is working to identify and take down similar videos.</s>ZUCKERBERG: Deep fakes are clearly one of the emerging threats that we need to get in front of and develop policy around to address.</s>ALESCI: What's remarkable here is that Facebook has spent millions of dollars trying to curry favor with Congress. Clearly that effort really stumbled yesterday. And some lawmakers, including the chairman of that -- the chairwoman of that committee, Maxine Waters, really believes that Facebook's power needs to be checked and even floated the idea of breaking the company up. Alisyn.</s>CAMEROTA: There's a lot that's remarkable here. Cristina, thank you very much for bringing that to us. So let's bring in CNN politics and technology reporting Donie O'Sullivan. Donie, when you watch that hearing, it does not feel like we are in good hands, frankly. And so why couldn't he answer some basic questions about this?</s>DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN POLITICS AND TECHNOLOGY REPORTER: Yes, more questions than answers yesterday, I think. I mean Facebook keeps framing this whole debate around political ads. Them allowing politicians to spread lies on the platform as a free expression debate. I mean there's a free expression debate, which is different to posting -- you know, allowing the politicians to post in the first place. But they are taking money and allowing these politicians to -- including the Trump campaign, to send targeted lies to American voters. And they keep claiming that it's not about the money. They keep saying, we're not making a lot of money out of this. Over the past 18 months, just in the U.S. alone, they have taken in -- almost $1 billion in political and issue ads. So to say it's not about the money I think is a bit disingenuous.</s>CAMEROTA: Gosh. People need facts. Voters need facts. And he seemed unable to sort of understand the difference between facts and spin. So here's another moment with AOC where she was trying to get to the point of how far will you go in allowing misinformation out there? So, watch this.</s>REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): Under your policy, you know, using census data as well, could I pay to target predominately black zip codes and advertise them the incorrect election date?</s>MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO, FACEBOOK: No, Congresswoman, you couldn't. We -- we have -- even for these policies around the newsworthiness of content that politicians say and the general principle that I believe that you're talking to --</s>OCASIO-CORTEZ: But you said you're not going to fact check my ads.</s>ZUCKERBERG: We -- we have -- if -- if anyone, including a politician, is saying things that can cause -- that is calling for violence or could risk imminent physical harm or voter or sense of suppression when we roll out the census suppression policy, we will take that content down.</s>CAMEROTA: He struggled over that one.</s>O'SULLIVAN: Facebook is framing this as a debate saying that in the marketplace of ideas, we can allow politicians to spread lies on our platform and the media and political opponents will call that out. That debate might be more convincing in a world without Facebook. What Facebook has helped create is these ideological echo chambers where, you know, we all know people that only follow pages and like accounts of points of view and political perspectives that they agree with. So it's actually quite possible for someone, a Facebook user, to see a lie in a political ad and to never see the correcting information on the platform.</s>CAMEROTA: Of course. And we already know from 2016 that obviously Russians created these fake grassroots sites, websites, whatever, links, and sent them out and people fell for it. Have we learned nothing from 2016 and are they seeing this already happen yet again?</s>O'SULLIVAN: Yes, so that was a major failure on the part of Facebook in 2016. The biggest Black Lives Matter page on Facebook was actually run out of Australia. It was a scam. A guy was taking money from Black Lives Matter activists. There was other pages on there with hundreds of thousands of followers that we now know was part of a Russian campaign. Facebook has taken steps. They've hired -- in fact some former intelligence officials to try and root out these campaigns now. And on Monday, they did take down a campaign from the same troll group in Russia that has been sanctioned and indicted and by -- hit with cyberattacks from the U.S. government. It is still at it. They're -- and laying the groundwork for 2020. We have some new reporting today, speaking to Black Lives Matter activists. Black Lives Matter, of course, the one -- the group of Americans that were targeted more so than anybody else in 2016, they're not trusting Facebook or Twitter or Google to manage this issue. They are now setting up their own in-house sort of team to monitor and see for this information so that they are not duped like they were in 2016.</s>CAMEROTA: Good for them. That's what it's going to take. That's obviously what it's going to take because I don't know that Mark Zuckerberg has had