Zuckerberg Says Facebook's a 'New Kind of Platform, Not a Traditional Media Company'

Facebook is neither a "traditional" media company, nor it is a "traditional" technology company, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said, adding that it is a new kind of platform.

Zuckerberg on Wednesday invited his 82 million followers on Facebook to sit in on his discussion with Chief Operating Officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg on Facebook Live where he tried to explain the nature of Facebook and attempted to answer several much-asked questions.

"We build technology and we feel responsible for how it is used. We do not write the news that people read on the platform, but at the same time we know that we do a lot more than just distributing the news. We are an important part of the public discourse," Zuckerberg said on Facebook Live.

However, earlier this year in an event in Italy, Zuckerberg had said that Facebook was a technology company and not just a media company, according to a report in Digital Trends.

Critics have blamed the social networking giant Facebook for influencing the US-elections in favour of President-elect Donald Trump by circulating a "host of fake news stories about political topics."

(Also see: Facebook Tackles Fake News With New Tools)

"Reflecting on 2016, this is just something that I am proud that people in this company take so seriously," Zuckerberg said on the issue of fake news.