Zuckerberg Recalls When Someone Wanted Death Sentence Against Him In Pakistan for Blasphemy | Watch- wna24
Mark Zuckerberg shares an incident when someone tried to sentence him to death in Pakistan for blasphemy | Image:
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Washington: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, during a recent interview, recalled how someone in Pakistan opened a criminal proceedings against him and wanted a death sentence against him for blasphemy.
Speaking about laws in different countries that people disagree with, Zuckerberg said, “Someone on the Facebook had put a picture and post on Prophet Mohammad to which another person reacted and said it was blasphemy in their culture… and they sewed me and opened criminal proceedings.”
Narrating the incident further, Mark Zuckerberg said, “I don’t know when exactly it was because I wasn’t planning to go to Pakistan so was not worried about it… but the point is, like there are places in the world that just have different values and that goes against our freedom of expression and they want us to crackdown and ban way more stuff…”
“I think, a lot of people would believe this is the right thing to do and to have those governments to be able to exert the power of saying okay we are going to throw you in prison… and this is one of the things that the US government need to defend about the American tech companies,” Zuckerberg added.
Meta CEO further acknowledged that the situation was unsettling, particularly in terms of personal safety.
“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 mentioned.
Meta apologises for Zuckerberg’s remark on India elections
In January, Meta India had apologised for CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s remarks that the incumbent government in India lost power in the 2024 elections due to its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and termed it an “inadvertent error”.
The apology came within days of Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw slamming remarks made by Zuckerberg as “misinformation”, and asserting that Meta must uphold facts and credibility.
BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, who heads the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology, made it clear that the panel will summon Meta over Zuckerberg’s comments.
Meta India’s Vice President Shivnath Thukral took to X to tender an apology on behalf of the company.
“Dear Honourable Minister @AshwiniVaishnaw, Mark’s observation that many incumbent parties were not re-elected in 2024 elections holds true for several countries, BUT not India. We would like to apologise for this inadvertent error. India remains an incredibly important country for @Meta and we look forward to being at the heart of its innovative future,” he wrote.
Meta to dump third-party fact-checkers on Facebook, Instagram
Last month in January, Zuckerberg announced Meta’s decision to replace its fact-checking systems on Facebook and Instagram with a “community notes” model, similar to the approach taken by Elon Musk’s X.
He justified the change by stating that Meta’s fact-checking had resulted in “too many mistakes and too much censorship” and was “too politically biased.”