Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is calling for more outside regulation in several areas in which the social media site has run into problems over the past few years: harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.
In an opinion piece Saturday in The Washington Post, Zuckerberg says governments and regulators rather than private companies like Facebook should be more active in policing the Internet. He says privacy rules such as the General Data Protection Regulation, which took effect in Europe last year, should be adopted elsewhere in the world.
The piece comes days after Facebook was criticized after a shooting rampage in New Zealand that killed 50 people was broadcast live on the site. It it was extending a ban on hate speech to white nationalists.
Zuckerberg said that while companies should accountable for setting their own standards on harmful content, the issue becomes far more complex when people are using an array of different sharing services that all have their own varying standards. He said a more “standardized approach” was necessary.
“Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I’ve come to believe that we shouldn’t make so many important decisions about speech on our own. So we’re creating an independent body so people can appeal our decisions.”
Zuckerberg also called for major internet services to publish quarterly “transparency reports,” just as they publish financial reports.
“Once we understand the prevalence of harmful content, we can see which companies are improving and where we should set the baselines,” he wrote.
