Senator Ed Markey wrote a letter to Mark Zuckerberg condemning Facebook’s practice of recommending political groups to the public. The US Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) wrote a damning letter to Mark Zuckerberg, in which he condemned Facebook’s method of recommending political groups to users on its platform. A representative from Markey’s office shared the letter with Insider. The Massachusetts Senator said Facebook not only allows users “to organize and coordinate violent and undemocratic efforts on these sites,” but also recommends them to the people. “Facebook’s referral system poses a serious threat to American democracy and public security,” Markey wrote in the letter. “Many Facebook groups (pages on your platform that serve as forums for users to communicate on a particular topic) are breeding grounds for hatred, echo chambers for disinformation, and places for coordinating violence, including explicit planning for the uprising in the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. “Markey said Facebook had” failed to meet its commitments “to end the practice. Commitments Markey said also caught up with Zuckerberg’s responses during a US Senate hearing in October.
