Zuckerberg condemns “coordinated effort” to paint Facebook in a bad light
Facebook’s chief executive and founder Mark Zuckerberg denounced “the coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to pay a false picture” of the social media platform.
In his calls to investor to discuss the third quarter results, he said: “I believe large organisation should be scrutinised. I much rather live in a society where they are then in one where they can’t be. Good faith criticism helps us get better.”
In contradiction to what was said today by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, an open culture reigns at Facebook, argued the chief executive.
“We encourage discussion and research on our work because we care about making this right.
“When we make decisions, we need to balance free expression with reducing harmful content or enable encrypted privacy with law enforcement, or allow research and interoperability with locking data down as much as possible.”
He also added that issues such as polarisation are not an issue created by social media and cannot be solve by social media on its own.
Zuckerberg’s comments come after Haugen said the platform sees safety as a cost centres.
Appearing in front of the UK’s Joint Committee, Haugen – former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation platform – said the algorithm promotes divisive content and will continue to fuel violent episode, because of the way it is designed.
“The events we’re seeing around the world, things like Myanmar and Ethiopia, those are the opening chapters because engagement-based ranking does two things: one, it prioritises and amplifies divisive and polarising extreme content and two it concentrates it,” City PM reported Haugen saying.