The beef between Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Mark Zuckerberg intensified Tuesday after audio surfaced of the Facebook CEO saying a Warren presidency would “suck” because her pledge to break up tech giants likely would lead to an unwanted legal battle that she would lose.
Ms. Warren has been on a crash course with Mr. Zuckerberg, arguing on the campaign trail that big tech companies — in particular Facebook, Google and Amazon — have gained so much economic and political power that they’ve stifled competition and decimated small businesses.
She took umbrage Tuesday after TheVerge.com unearthed audio from a July employees meeting during which Mr. Zuckerberg is heard saying if Ms. Warren is elected president he likely would be forced to “go to the mat and fight” against her plan.
“What would really ’suck’ is if we don’t fix a corrupt system that lets giant companies like Facebook engage in illegal anticompetitive practices, stomp on consumer privacy rights, and repeatedly fumble their responsibility to protect our democracy,” Ms. Warren tweeted.
The spat coincided with the news that Facebook had shut down an Ivy League professor’s six-year-old page, Elizabeth Warren Wiki, saying the site chronicling the Massachusetts senator’s debunked American Indian heritage claims violates the tech giant’s rules against impersonation.
In the audio obtained by TheVerge.com, Mr. Zuckerberg said he would like to avoid a “major lawsuit against our government,” but that his hands would be tied if Ms. Warren wins the election and follows through on her promise.
“If she gets elected president, then I bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.
He said it would “suck” to be put in that position.
“We care about our country and, like, want to work with our government to do good things, but look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try threaten something that existential you go to the mat and you fight,” he said.
The Facebook founder has faced stiff criticism from both the left and the right, accused of failing to combat misinformation and hate speech and to protect consumer data. The company also has been accused of silencing conservative viewpoints.
The company came under more fire Tuesday after Seema Nanda, the CEO of the Democratic National Committee, told CNN that Facebook is failing to stop President Trump from misleading the “American people on their platform unimpeded” through digital advertisements.
The Federal Trade Commission in July reached a $5 billion settlement, the largest it has imposed on a company, with Facebook over its mishandling of personal data. Critics noted that it amounted to about a month of Facebook’s revenue.
Mr. Zuckerberg has been trying to ease the concerns of lawmakers and traveled to Capitol Hill last month to meet with congressional Democrats and Republicans.
Ms. Warren, meanwhile, arguably has been the most vocal Facebook critic on the campaign trail. She rolled out a plan in March to “make big, structural changes to the tech sector to promote more competition — including breaking up Amazon, Facebook and Google.”
“More competition means more options for consumers and content creators, and more pressure on companies like Facebook to address the glaring problems with their businesses,” she says in her plan.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.