Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes Democrat Joe Biden is going to be the next US president, according to an audiotape obtained by Buzz Feed News on Thursday.
"I believe the outcome of the election is now clear and Joe Biden is going to be our next president", Zuckerberg told his employees at a company town hall. "It's important that people have confidence that the election was fundamentally fair, and that goes for the tens of millions of people that voted for Trump."
Despite mainstream media projecting Biden's victory, incumbent US President Donald Trump says this year's presidential race was rigged by Democrats in favour of Joe Biden, citing witness accounts of mass election fraud and irregularities. Following preliminary polling results, Trump wondered why he was leading the former vice president in a number of states but within hours, the results showed Biden ahead.
According to Zuckerberg, Americans do have the right to challenge the credibility of the election results, but he says it is "unhelpful" that they are inspiring hopes the election outcome would be different "from what was projected".
However, a number of Facebook employees reportedly challenged Zuckerberg calling Biden the winner, while one of them said the election "wasn't fair".
Weeks before Election Day, Facebook introduced new restrictions, which prompted Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to subpoena Zuckerberg to testify over acts of censorship and restrictions on free speech in October. President Trump, along with other Republicans, blasted Facebook for limiting the circulation of a New York Post story about potential corrupt dealings of Joe Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine.
"We have seen Big Tech, we have seen Twitter and Facebook actively interfering in this election in a way that has no precedent in the history of our country", GOP Senator Ted Cruz said. "Never before have we seen active censorship of a major press publication with serious allegations of corruption of one of the two candidates for President."
In the House of Representatives, Republicans also called on their Democratic colleagues to hold a similar emergency hearing on "Big Tech's censorship and election interference".
On Wednesday, Facebook said it will continue to temporarily ban election-related advertisements at least for another month. Media reported that both Democrats and Republicans were concerned about political advertising being hidden due to the upcoming Senate runoffs in Georgia. On Tuesday, Facebook reportedly pulled several pages connected to ex-Trump administration chief strategist Steve Bannon for allegedly spreading misinformation about the 2020 presidential race.
In early November, the Washington Post reported how Facebook, which also owns Instagram, could use a "shadow-banning" technique against Trump and members of his family during the 2020 election campaign.
