Facebook had a torturous time with trash-talking provocateurs from the right. When the white-nationalist conspiracy monger Alex Jones repeatedly posted comments that seemed to violate Facebook-s hate-speech rules, the company was loath to ban him. Complicating matters was that Jones was an individual, and his Facebook page, InfoWars, was an operation staffed by several people.

The situation was radioactive. Fringe as he was, Jones had a huge following, including the president, who had been a guest on the InfoWars radio show. Did Jones-s newsworthiness make him a figure like the president, worthy of a hate-speech free pass? During the summer of 2018, the controversy raged, as reporters kept citing hateful posts. Ultimately, it was the pressure. Within hours after Apple took down his podcast, Zuckerberg himself pulled the plug on InfoWars. Jones was suspended for thirty days, and ultimately Facebook would ban him as "dangerous." It did this in tandem with the expulsion of the fierce-tongued Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, in what appeared to be an unmistakable play for balance.

When I pressed Zuckerberg in early 2018 about Facebook-s delicacy in handling GOP complaints, he bent over so far backward in respecting their point of view that I worried his chair would hit the floor. "If you have a company which is ninety percent liberal—that-s probably the makeup of the Bay Area—I do think you have some responsibility to make sure that you go out of your way and build systems to make sure that you-re not unintentionally building bias in," he told me. Then, ever balancing, he mentioned that Facebook should monitor whether its ad systems discriminated against minorities. Indeed, Facebook would commission studies of each of those areas. Part of Zuckerberg-s discomfort arises from his preference for less oversight. Even while acknowledging that content on Facebook can be harmful or even deadly, he believes that free speech is liberating. "It is the founding ideal of the company," he says. "If you give people a voice, they will be able to share their experiences, creating more transparency in the world. Giving people the personal liberty to share their experiences will end up being positive over time."