Facebook co-founder, chairman, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is being highly criticized on social media for his remarks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday morning.
Senator Richard Blumenthal asked Zuckerberg about a recent controversy – one that led to massive outrage, and different responses, on multiple social media platforms.
“How many times is Steve Bannon allowed to call for the murder of government officials before Facebook suspends his account?” the Senator from Connecticut asked.
Bannon is the former Trump campaign CEO, former Trump White House chief strategist, and former Breitbart executive chairman who has held other right wing and extremist posts.
He recently called for the beheadings of FBI Director Chris Wray and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is the longtime Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Twitter banned Bannon over his call to behead the two federal officials. Facebook did not.
Zuckerberg defended merely removing Bannon’s video, but not banning him, saying only terrorist or child exploitation content deserves immediate permanent user removal from the platform.
The Facebook CEO’s response elicited more outrage.