Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently claimed that he received death threats in Pakistan while discussing a legal battle in the South Asian country in an interview with popular podcast host Joe Rogan.
Zuckerberg revealed a death threat issued to him after somebody on Facebook had posted a drawing of Prophet Mohammed.
“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,” Zuckerberg said.
The incident triggered safety concerns, he added.
“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 said.
Laws conflicting with free expression
While discussing various laws that conflict with free expression adds pressure on global platforms to regulate content more strictly.
“The point is, 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,” the Meta founder said.
“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,” he added.
Meta and fact-checking system
On January 7, Meta announced to get rid of fact-checking systems on Facebook and Instagram with a “community notes” model, similar to Elon Musk’s X. Zuckerberg said that Meta’s fact-checking had resulted in “too many mistakes and too much censorship” and was “too politically biased.”
