[ MUSIC ] Welcome to Fortune Tech Debate, where we debate the news of the day in two minutes. Today, we're talking about Mark Zuckerberg saying that Facebook influencing the election with fake news is a crazy idea. Let's put two minutes on the clock. All right, Jeff. Take it away. Mark Zuckerberg is right. This is a crazy idea. People vote for all sorts of reasons. They vote on immigration. They vote on jobs. They vote on civil rights. They don't vote on Facebook. Okay, but I disagree. I think that Facebook definitely influences the way that people vote. I mean people are turning to Facebook for news. A few polls that somewhere around half of the Americans go to Facebook as a news source. And so, if they are seeing fake information disseminated on this platform, that is definitely that is definitely gonna affect the way that they vote. Their judgement, all of their opinions, their biases. Bob, two points, people get one, people get their information from all sorts of places. Real and fake to get it from supermarket tabloid. They sees stories about Hillary Clinton and bad boy. That doesn't mean they make their election decision based on that. And secondly, even if Facebook is shaping their perceptions, what do you want to do about it? Are we gonna walk in with the government and tell Mark Zuckerberg how to run his company? I think that's exactly what needs to be done. I think it is irresponsible to dereliction of duty on Zuckerberg and his executives To say that they are not influencing this at all. Look there have been trending fake stories on Facebook of all different flavors and types. And there have been trending fake stories in the US newspapers since colonial days. And the reason America succeeds is people can publish what they want. Okay but if you have a platform that's saying, you have nine 11 conspiracy theories going wild on Facebook, and serving the up to the mass mainstream public in America. The National Enquirer has a platform to tell you about bat boy. What do you wanna do about that? They certainly do and I think that's irresponsible as well. I think that Mark Zuckerberg he has quite an audience, and an audience that's different from the national enquirer. He has billions of people on his network right now Going there, looking for news items and most of it's real. [ CROSSTALK ] People publish some cookie stuff, well maybe that's their fault. They should find less cookie friends that puts better news to it so it's not Mark Zuckerberg's problem. I think that as much as Facebook says it's a tech company, it is a media company when you get down to it. Facebook can be what sort of company it wants to be. [ SOUND ] That's all the time we've got Today, come back to fortune. com for more tech debate. [ MUSIC ]

Facebook Could Have Influenced Election with ‘Fake News’