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Mark Zuckerberg Wants The Government To Help Police Internet Content (bbc.com)
"Mark Zuckerberg says regulators and governments should play a more active role in controlling internet content," according to the BBC, calling for new laws governing harmful content, election integrity, privacy, and data portability.
An anonymous reader quotes their report: In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, Facebook's chief says the responsibility for monitoring harmful content is too great for firms alone... "Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree," Mr Zuckerberg writes... In brief, Mr Zuckerberg calls for the following things:
- Common rules that all social media sites need to adhere to, enforced by third-party bodies, to control the spread of harmful content
- All major tech companies to release a transparency report every three months, to put it on a par with financial reporting
- Stronger laws around the world to protect the integrity of elections, with common standards for all websites to identify political actors
- Laws that not only apply to candidates and elections, but also other "divisive political issues", and for laws to apply outside of official campaign periods
- New industry-wide standards to control how political campaigns use data to target voters online
- More countries to adopt privacy laws like the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force last year
- A "common global framework" that means these laws are all standardised globally, rather than being substantially different from country to country
- Clear rules about who's responsible for protecting people's data when they move it from one service to another
Zuckerberg believes the same regulations should apply to all web sites to make it easier to stop the spread of "harmful content." He also says Facebook will be creating "an independent body so people can appeal our decisions" when content is taken.
An anonymous reader quotes their report: In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, Facebook's chief says the responsibility for monitoring harmful content is too great for firms alone... "Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree," Mr Zuckerberg writes... In brief, Mr Zuckerberg calls for the following things:
- Common rules that all social media sites need to adhere to, enforced by third-party bodies, to control the spread of harmful content
- All major tech companies to release a transparency report every three months, to put it on a par with financial reporting
- Stronger laws around the world to protect the integrity of elections, with common standards for all websites to identify political actors
- Laws that not only apply to candidates and elections, but also other "divisive political issues", and for laws to apply outside of official campaign periods
- New industry-wide standards to control how political campaigns use data to target voters online
- More countries to adopt privacy laws like the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force last year
- A "common global framework" that means these laws are all standardised globally, rather than being substantially different from country to country
- Clear rules about who's responsible for protecting people's data when they move it from one service to another
Zuckerberg believes the same regulations should apply to all web sites to make it easier to stop the spread of "harmful content." He also says Facebook will be creating "an independent body so people can appeal our decisions" when content is taken.
Zuckerberg calling government for help? He must fear a FTC investigation.
There have long been laws against certain things like child porn, plagiarism, and defamation. There is a democratic process for drawing these boundaries, and a formal justice system for interpreting and enforcing them. When policing speech is delegated to universities, private companies, etc. they can draw the boundaries a lot tighter, and enforce them arbitrarily. We'd be better off if Facebook, youtube etc acted as common carriers more or less.
He knows the government is about to come down hard on Facebook, which would put them at a competitive disadvantage vs other advertising-based giants like Google, so rather than take that hit alone he wants everyone to suffer the same fate so they don't gain any advantage on him.
Common rules: Set by Germany over history? Spain over Catalonia? Communist China over the real China Taiwan? The UK over word use online?
Release a transparency report: The EU can show who got reported and removed. How many internet users are getting interviewed by police about their use of words online. What new tax was paid on every internet link in the EU.
Stronger laws around the world to protect the integrity of elections. Support one side of politics. Talk about any other politics and get removed and reported.
Laws to apply outside of official campaign periods. The freedom to support one side of politics before and after any approved election.
New industry-wide standards. No freedom of speech. No freedom after speech. Blasphemy laws can be used globally.
More countries to adopt privacy laws like the European Union. A EU link tax and more EU censorship.
A "common global framework". Censorship.
Clear rules about who's responsible for protecting people's data. Ad brands get to have their approved ads track users globally. No ad blocking software.
All enforced by NGO's, political parties, theocracies, ad brands, police, think tanks, the EU, social media brands and mil govs.
Freedom of speech and freedom after speech is looking great again.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
We have free speech, so as long as his company is based in the US no government has the right to "police content," even on his shit-tier platform.
Money is what this is about.
Zuck's comments can be boiled down to: It costs us too much money to maintain a hoard of people and machines to monitor the content on our sites. We want the government to take over that expense to both lay it at the feet of the taxpayer and take over the bad PR censoring and making decisions on content gets us.
This! Well partially anyway. By passing the buck to the government through clear guidelines the whole issue ceases to be a moving target. Dealing with a wide array of nutjobs who range from "Fixing my spelling mistakes is censorship" to "Why did Facebook let someone hurt my feelings" and from "damn Cambridge analytica hoovered up private data" to "I purposefully posted this publicly how dare someone can't see it" is difficult.
When you have a wide range of people to appease it would help if at some point someone draws a line in the sand for you the walk along. Being able to pass the buck to the government is kind of what the government is there for in the first place and that way when Congress come knocking, you can just throw your certificate of regulatory compliance in their face.