Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently opened up about a legal case in Pakistan, where he was sued over blasphemous content on Facebook. In an interview with Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg highlighted the challenges global tech platforms face due to differing legal systems worldwide.
Zuckerberg on Legal Pressures
Discussing the lawsuit, Zuckerberg shared:
“There are laws in different countries that we disagree with. For example, there was a point at which someone was trying to get me sentenced to death in Pakistan because someone on Facebook had a picture where they had a drawing of Prophet Mohammed, and someone said, ‘That’s blasphemy in our culture.’ They sued me and opened this criminal proceeding. I don’t know exactly where it went because I’m just not planning to go to Pakistan, so I was not that worried about it.”
He admitted the situation was concerning for personal safety:
“But it was a little bit disconcerting – I was like, alright, these guys are like – it’s not great (if you’re) flying over that region, you don’t want your plane to go down above Pakistan, if that thing goes through. That one was sort of avoidable.”
Zuckerberg also addressed the broader issue of government pressure on tech companies to regulate content more strictly. He emphasized:
“There are places around the world that just have different values that go against our free expression values and want us to crack down and ban way more stuff than I think a lot of people would believe would be the right thing to do. To have those governments be able to exert the power of saying they’re going to throw you in prison – that’s a lot of force. I think this is one of the things that the US government is probably going to need to help defend the American tech companies for abroad.”
Meta’s Shift in Content Moderation
Earlier, on January 7, Zuckerberg announced that Meta would replace its fact-checking system on Facebook and Instagram with a “community notes” model, similar to the approach used by Elon Musk’s X. He argued that Meta’s fact-checking led to “too many mistakes and too much censorship” and was “too politically biased.”
Zuckerberg’s Meeting with Trump
Following Donald Trump’s 2024 US presidential election victory, Zuckerberg met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. According to Variety, Meta donated USD 1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, alongside other major tech companies. Zuckerberg also attended Trump’s inauguration on January 20.