Neil Chilson, a senior fellow at Stand Together, a Koch Network, said Facebook’s stance on free speech is a very sensible political choice. When Mr. trump speaks, reporters then fact-check what he’s saying, showing that the cure for politicians is a misstatement of more speech rather than shutting it down, Mr. Chilson said.

Mr. Zuckerberg decided in recent days to speak publicly at Georgetown University as the debate over facebooks positions on political discourse grew louder. On Wednesday he wrote on Facebook that he was writing a speech that was the most comprehensive take ive written about my views on why I believe the voice is important.

He will continue his public offensive on Friday when he plans to give an interview to Fox News ‘ Dana Perino. Next week, he will be in Washington for a hearing on the companies ‘ cryptocurrency project called Libra. It will be his second time testifying before Congress after April 2018, when he was answering questions from lawmakers about the handling of user data on Facebook.

In an interview at silicon valley’s Facebooks headquarters on Tuesday, Mr. Zuckerberg laid out more reasoning behind his speech. He repeatedly referred to Facebook’s role as an American company and how it would be viewed over time.

Today, the state of the global Internet around the world is primarily determined by American companies and platforms with strong values of free speech, he said. There’s just no guarantee that will win over time.

In his speech, he said he had considered banning political advertising on Facebook. But he said political advertising could be seen as part of the speech and that the slope of deciding which issues are political and which would not be too slippery to navigate. He added that political advertising was Facebooks ‘ negligible $ 55.8 billion in annual revenue.

Mr. Zuckerberg acknowledged in an interview that his position would not satisfy everyone. But he said he wrote the address to set out his broader views and how he wanted his company to work long into the future, including the distant day when he no longer runs Facebook.

I hope this is a moment for us to put our place in history in perspective, he said.