Facebook Chief Mark Zuckerberg Wants More Internet Regulation
March 30 2019 - 10:58PM
Dow Jones News
By Jeff Horwitz
Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg called for global
regulators to take a "more active role" in governing the internet,
among his strongest remarks yet on regulation that come after more
than a year of intense scrutiny over missteps at the social
network.
In an op-ed published Saturday on the websites of the Washington
Post and Ireland's Independent, Mr. Zuckerberg said such
intervention is vital to protect both the welfare of users and the
fundamental values of an open internet.
He said the U.S. needed European-style privacy regulations and
called on regulators globally to set clearer rules regarding
"harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data
portability."
Every day, he said, Facebook makes "decisions about what speech
is harmful, what constitutes political advertising, and how to
prevent sophisticated cyberattacks," calling the work necessary.
"But if we were starting from scratch, we wouldn't ask companies to
make these judgments alone," he said.
The piece, also published on Facebook, follows a difficult two
years for the company, which has been assailed by legislators and
regulators for failing to prevent foreign interference in U.S.
elections, failing to adequately safeguard its users' data and
failing to suppress hate speech and other forms of harmful content
on its platform. Earlier this month, Mr. Zuckerberg cited Facebook
users' desire to have more private conversations as the impetus for
pivoting toward more intimate, encrypted messaging-based
products.
It marked Mr. Zuckerberg's clearest embrace to date of the need
for governments to set rules as well as hold Facebook and its
competitors accountable for lapses in content moderation and data
security.
Many of Mr. Zuckerberg's recommendations would require
international cooperation, such as his proposal that governments
world-wide adopt rules akin to Europe's General Data Protection
Regulation -- widely regarded as among the most stringent in its
requirements on privacy and data security. Other tech executives,
including Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook and Google chief Sundar Pichai,
also have suggested the U.S. pursue stricter privacy rules.
Governments globally need similar rules, Mr. Zuckerberg said, to
"ensure that the Internet does not get fractured."
His proposals also highlight ways in which Facebook's business
is changing. His embrace of privacy regulations, stricter
content-moderation requirements and data portability -- in which
users would be able to access and interact with personal accounts
across many different sites and apps -- echoes proposals made by
Facebook opponents within just the past few years.
"People shouldn't have to rely on individual companies
addressing these issues by themselves," Mr. Zuckerberg concluded in
his op-ed. "We should have a broader debate about what we want as a
society and how regulation can help."
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 30, 2019 22:43 ET (02:43 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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