Facebook CEO blames Trump, rioters for Capitol attack

"How is it possible for you not to at least admit that Facebook played a leading role in the recruitment, planning and execution of the attack on the capitol?" asked Democratic Representative Mike Doyle.

San Francisco: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg refused to own up any responsibility for the January 6 attack on the US Capitol as he put the blame on former US President Donald Trump for his “words” and the people involved in the assault for “their actions”.

In his first appearance before the US Congress since the January 6 attack, Zuckerberg on Thursday also blamed the people for spreading misleading content.

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At the hearing with the House Energy and Commerce committee, lawmakers pressed the Facebook CEO to own up some responsibility for the attack for facilitating the organisation of the attack.

“How is it possible for you not to at least admit that Facebook played a leading role in the recruitment, planning and execution of the attack on the capitol?” asked Democratic Representative Mike Doyle.

Zuckerberg said that “the responsibility lies with the people who took the actions to break the law and do the insurrection”.

“Secondarily, also with the people who spread that content, including the president but others as well, with repeated rhetoric over time, saying that the election was rigged and encouraging people to organize, I think that those people bear the primary responsibility as well.”

In his opening remarks Zuckerberg said that the company believes “Congress should consider making platforms’ intermediary liability protection for certain types of unlawful content conditional on companies’ ability to meet best practices to combat the spread of this content”.

Besides Zuckerberg, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also faced questions related to misinformation and safety issues plaguing their online platforms during the hearing extending up to over five hours.