Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Asks Governments For More Internet Regulation
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has asked governments and regulators to play a more active role in establishing rules to control the internet.
He wants the screws tightened on digital companies such as his own, and for sanctions to be given if they refuse to abide by rules on privacy, political or harmful content.
“We have too much power” he said…
RT reports: Facebook has been under immense pressure from US lawmakers to crack down on supposedly Russia-linked political ads and bots they accused of sowing discord in the run-up to the 2016 election, as well as combating hate speech and protecting the personal data of its millions of users from being harvested by third parties such as the infamous Cambridge Analytica research firm.
Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of the scandal-ridden company, has embarked on a mission to repair its image, recently unveiling his “privacy-focused” vision. On Saturday, he took the damage control one step further, telling the government he’s been a bad boy and needs to be regulated.
Governments taking up a more active role in policing the internet is a good thing, Zuckerberg wrote in an op-ed published by the Washington Post. Government control would actually somehow create more freedom, he argues, by setting up an internet-sized safe space.
“I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators. By updating the rules for the Internet, we can preserve what’s best about it — the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things — while also protecting society from broader harms,” Zuckerberg wrote.R
Zuckerberg lamented that his company has been allowed to get away with too much control over freedom of speech, and suggested it should be somebody else’s problem – somebody selected by politicians.
“Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree,” he wrote, adding that he believes that it should be done on their behalf by an independent body that would set the rules Facebook and others would have to follow.
Facebook and Twitter were accused of bias and censorship after they purged hundreds of alternative media pages ahead of the November 2018 midterm election. Recently, Facebook imposed a ban on any praise of “white nationalism” and “white separatism,” prompting more free speech concerns.
