WASHINGTON – U.S. Congressman David N. Cicilline (RI-01), the top Democrat on the House Antitrust Subcommittee, issued the following statement today:

“Facebook cannot be trusted to regulate itself. This staggering report makes clear that Facebook executives will always put their massive profits ahead of the interests of their customers. We’ve known for some time that Facebook chose to turn a blind eye to the spread of hate speech and Russian propaganda on its platform. Now we know that once they knew the truth, top executives did everything they could to hide it from the public by using a playbook of suppressing opposition and propagating conspiracy theories.” 

“It is long past time for us to take action. I am confident that, despite Facebook’s best efforts to buy Congress’s silence, the will of the American people will prevail. Next January, Congress should get to work enacting new laws to hold concentrated economic power to account, address the corrupting influence of corporate money in our democracy, and restore the rights of Americans.”