By Staff, Agencies

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Congress at Wednesday’s Big Tech hearing that the company censors almost 90 percent of ‘hate speech’ before it’s allowed to circulate.

He made the remark in response to pressure from Democrats to submit to the advertiser boycott.

“We’re able to proactively identify 89 percent of the hate speech that we take down before, I think, it’s even seen by other people,” Zuckerberg told the Antitrust Subcommittee of the US House of Representatives on Wednesday.

The statement was in response to Rep. Jamie Raskin [D-Maryland] pressuring Facebook to “join the civil rights movement” by submitting to the demands of the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, an advertising boycott accusing Facebook of tolerating “widespread hate” on the platform.

Facebook has been under growing pressure since the 2016 election, with Democrats blaming it for Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump. Raskin repeated the same accusations at the hearing.

Zuckerberg argued that Facebook has built “defenses” since 2016 that now amount to “some of the most advanced that any company or government has in the world.”

Having tens of thousands of employees has a downside, though – as Zuckerberg admitted to Rep. Matt Gaetz [R-Florida], who grilled him over Project Veritas video evidence from two whistleblowers talking about a “culture” inside Facebook that discriminated against conservatives.

“People make mistakes” and have their own goals, Zuckerberg replied.

In addition to Zuckerberg, Wednesday’s unprecedented virtual hearing in the House featured the CEOs of three other major US tech companies: Apple’s Tim Cook, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Google’s Sundar Pichai.