San Francisco: US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday lashed out at Facebook for refusing to block the sharing of a video doctored to make her appear drunk or impaired.
The clip of Pelosi, which was tweeted by President Donald Trump last week and shared feverishly by his supporters, was edited to make it appear that the powerful Democratic politician was stammering, slurring her words and maybe even intoxicated at a press conference. She has called on Face-book to block the video, but the social network has refused. “Facebook knows that this is false,” Pelosi said in a transcript of an interview.
“They’re lying to the public.” Pelosi added that Facebook’s decision to allow posting of the misleading video calls into doubt whether it was as unaware as it claims of Russian manipulation of the platform that helped Trump win the White House in 2016. “I believe that Facebook has proven by not taking down something they know is false that they were willing enablers of the Russian interference in our elections,” Pelosi said.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Facebook is quoted in reports as saying that the social network’s news feed ranking of the video clip sank and that it was tagged with an alert saying it is false after fact checkers confirmed that was the case.
