After an article published by the Washington Examiner was flagged as false via Facebook's fact-checking system, but later reinstated, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Sheldon Whitehouse, Tom Carper, and Brian Schatz demanded the social network given them a detailed explanation of the criteria for an item to be verified by fact-checkers.
One problem that Facebook has always faced with politicians is the way it moderates content on the platform. It already happened during the United States presidential elections, when they were accused of having allowed the manipulation of public opinion by not eliminating "fake news."
With the COVID-19 outbreak, the social network has been much more strict, trying to eliminate everything that does not come from unofficial sources. By cooperating with external fact-checking companies, Facebook is now able to label the news as "fake" using a tag that alerts users.
However, some senators say that the platform is arbitrarily selecting the content they moderate, so they are demanding its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, explain what criteria they use to determine the articles to be reviewed.
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