During Ireland's highly contentious abortion ban referendum last year, Facebook blocked American pro-life groups from running advertisements in the country, despite the Irish government declining to ask the company to do so, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
"During [Ireland's] election, leading up to that referendum, a bunch of pro-life American groups advertised ... to try to influence public opinion there," Zuckerberg said. "And we went to the Irish and asked folks there, 'well how do you want us to handle this? You have no laws on the books that are relevant for whether we should be allowing this kind of speech in your election, and really this doesn't feel like the kind of thing a private company should be making a decision on.'"
Zuckerberg went on to say that the Irish government told Facebook that since they didn't have a law, the question of foreign advertising was punted back to the company to self-regulate. "We ended up not allowing the ads," Zuckerberg confirmed.
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Facebook's decision to block the ads has been controversial since the company publicly announced its intent just weeks before the May 2018 referendum. "I'm not sure Irish people ever voted for Mark Zuckerberg to make these types of decisions," Gavin Sheridan wrote for The Guardian at the time.
Zuckerberg used the example of Ireland to urge countries to update their laws. "I really don't think that as a society we want private companies to be the final word on making these decisions," he agreed. Watch his comments below. Jeva Lange
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