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Aaron Sorkin writes furious open letter to Zuckerberg accusing him of ‘pumping out crazy lies’ after refusal to ban political advertising

The Social Network writer has criticised Facebook for ‘assaulting truth’

Ellie Harrison
Thursday 31 October 2019 14:02 GMT
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The Social Network - trailer

Aaron Sorkin has written a furious open letter to Mark Zuckerberg accusing him of spreading “crazy lies” after Facebook’s refusal to ban political advertising.

The writer’s 2010 film The Social Network shined an uncomfortable light on the rift between Zuckerberg and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who claimed he stole the idea for Facebook and subsequently made billions from it.

Sorkin has now written an op-ed in The New York Times after news emerged that while Twitter is banning all political adverts, Facebook has refused to follow suit.

“I admire your deep belief in free speech,” wrote Sorkin. “I get a lot of use out of the First Amendment. Most important, it’s a bedrock of our democracy and it needs to be kept strong.

“But this can’t possibly be the outcome you and I want, to have crazy lies pumped into the water supply that corrupt the most important decisions we make together. Lies that have a very real and incredibly dangerous effect on our elections and our lives and our children’s lives.”

The screenwriter also said Facebook’s inclusion of political ads on its site is “not defending free speech, Mark, that’s assaulting truth”.

At the time of The Social Network's release, claimed Sorkin, Zuckerberg criticised the film for being inaccurate.

However, in front of a congressional committee earlier this month, Zuckerberg said: "In most cases, in a democracy, I believe people should be able to see for themselves what politicians they may or may not vote for are saying and judge their character for themselves.”​

Since reading about Zuckerberg's above statement, Sorkin added that if he had known about the businessman's attitude to fact-checking, he would have “had the Winklevoss twins invent Facebook” in his film.

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