Mark Zuckerberg went to Brussels on the current stop of his apology trip Tuesday to provide yet another mea culpa for personal privacy and policy mistakes that resulted in among the biggest information leakages in Facebook’s history and an extraordinary attack on democratic elections throughout the West.
If this was expected to be part of a beauty offensive for Facebook, it failed
After listening to about an hour of concerns from members of the European Union’s Parliament, Zuckerberg addressed at the end– instead of reacting to each concern after it was postured. But he wound up just investing about 25 minutes providing his replies, neglecting some concerns entirely.
“I asked you six yes-and-no questions, and I got not a single answer,” stated Guy Verhofstadt, a Belgian political leader. Zuckerberg stopped briefly and after that reacted, “I’ll make sure we follow up and get you answers to those” in the next couple of days.
Cardboard cutouts of Mark Zuckerberg with the words “Fix Fakebook” on their chests were staged in front of the EU’s hearing Tuesday.
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The 34- year-old multibillionaire has actually been addressing concerns for weeks about whatever from Russian meddling in the 2016 United States governmental election, which some argue handed a success to Donald Trump, to the 87 million user profiles that were incorrectly shown a now-defunct UK-based political consultancy called CambridgeAnalytica
European regulators were plainly dissatisfied.
“This represents an attack on our fundamental values,” stated European Parliament President Antonio Tajani onTuesday “We need to prevent this from happening again.”
One kept in mind that Facebook had actually found out about Cambridge Analytica 3 years back, however just acknowledged just recently that the company had actually gotten access to users’ information. Another indicated the pervasiveness of Facebook’s information collection. And others raised issues about complimentary speech permitting Nazi propaganda.
Verhofstadt recommended that Facebook might be contravening of European antimonopoly laws, particularly due to the fact that Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp are amongst the most popular messaging services on the planet. He asked if Facebook will open its books to European regulators to think about whether his business is a monopoly. “It’s not enough to say ‘we’re going to fix it ourselves.'”
Meanwhile, Nigel Farage, who directs Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy, the European Parliament’s conservative populist group, asked Zuckerberg to safeguard the platform’s political leanings and its openness. Right- leaning Facebook users who hold mainstream, not extremist, political views “are being willfully discriminated against,” he stated.
“Would you accept that today Facebook is not a platform for all ideas that is operated impartially?” statedFarage “I’m not somebody who requires legislation on the worldwide phase, however I’m beginning to believe that we require a social networks expense of rights.
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EU Parliament member to Zuck: Did you create a digital…
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Zuckerberg insisted that hate speech, terror and violence have “no place on our services.” He added that his team is is creating artificial intelligence tools to identify, for example, almost all the content from ISIS. He also said Facebook is getting better at identifying bullying and possibilities of self harm.
“We’ll never be perfect,” Zuckerberg said. “Our adversaries, especially on the election side — the people trying to interfere — will have access to the same AI tools that we will. So it’s an arms race, and we’ll constantly be working to stay ahead.”
Zuckerberg ended the session telling Parliament, “I want to be sensitive to time because we are 15 minutes over.”
But members of Parliament didn’t care about time limits. And now they’re going to have to wait for answers. Â Â
Rebuilding trust
So far, Zuckerberg’s added new privacy controls that let people clear their web and app histories from Facebook, and he’s promised that the 10,000 curators the company is hiring this year will clean up fake news, hate speech and other objectionable content found on the social network.
Facebook’s chief also told EU lawmakers Tuesday that the company will add 3,000 workers across 12 European cities this year to help in its fight against online abuse, hate speech and election interference.Â
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Zuck’s mea culpa to EU Parliament
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Zuckerberg has said the hiring is needed to address concerns that bad actors in Russia had used Facebook to spread propaganda and misinformation during the 2016 US presidential election.
When he introduced a new dating feature for Facebook at the company’s annual F8 developer conference last month, he was quick to add that it had been designed with “privacy and safety in mind from the beginning.”
Still, that hasn’t been enough.
Some advertisers, including Firefox web browser maker Mozilla and speaker maker Sonos, stopped advertising on Facebook as the scandal was unfolding. And while users started a campaign called #DeleteFacebook, the company said it actually saw user growth during the three months ended March 31. And through it all, it turns out Facebook still pulled in money hand over fist — counting nearly $5 billion in profits during that same time, a 63 percent increase over the previous year — by using the details its users share to direct more relevant ads to them.
Facebook makes the majority of its money selling ads.
Prominent tech executives, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook, have criticized team Zuck. Musk, who deleted Tesla and SpaceX pages from Facebook, said the social network gave him “the willies.” Cook said Facebook failed to regulate itself and vowed Apple wouldn’t make money off its user’s data.
“It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm,” Zuckerberg said during his comments during two-days of testimony to Congress last month. “That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake.”
In Europe, Zuckerberg has to contend with regulators who take a much stronger stance on privacy than in the US.
Among the questions Verhofstadt asked — and didn’t get an answer to — was one about the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. Those new privacy rules go into effect in Europe on May 25 and Facebook said last month that it will adhere to the GDPR. Verhofstadt wanted to know if Zuckerberg was “telling the truth” about embracing the strict new privacy provisions.
He also asked a stone-faced Zuckerberg how he’d like to be remembered: “As one of the great internet giants, together with Steve Jobs [and] Bill Gates, who have improved the world and our societies? Or, on the other hand, [as] the genius who produced a digital beast that is damaging our democracies and our societies?”
Verhofstadt stated he’ll be enjoying to make certain Zuckerberg provides the responses he guaranteed onTuesday
“I trust that written answers from Facebook will be forthcoming,” Verhofstadt wrote in a tweet after the hearing. “If these are not accurately answered in detail, the EU competition authorities must be activated & legislation sharpened.”
CNET’s Katie Collins, Rochelle Garner, Abrar Al-Heeti, Laura Hautala and Alfred Ng added to this report.
First released May 22 at 4 a.m. PT.
Update at 9: 38 a.m. PT: Adds more information as occasion began.
Update at 9: 38 a.m., 10: 11 a.m. and 10: 20 a.m. PT: Adds concerns from European regulators.
Update at 10: 30 a.m., 10: 49 PT: Adds Zuckerberg’s responses to European regulators.
Update at 1: 58 p.m. PT: Adds information from the occasion and later.
Cambridge Analytica: Everything you require to understand about Facebook’s information mining scandal.
iHate: CNET takes a look at how intolerance is taking control of the web.
