Zuckerberg Says Not Facebook's Job to Regulate Political Ads
April 04 2019 - 9:41AM
Dow Jones News
By Kimberly Chin
Facebook Inc. (FB) Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday
it's not the role of Facebook to regulate political advertising on
its platform, a response to the intense public and government
scrutiny the social-media giant is facing over its handling of the
spread of misinformation.
In an interview with George Stephanopoulos aired on ABC's "Good
Morning America," Mr. Zuckerberg welcomed more industry or
government regulation on the definition of political advertising,
saying current laws weren't doing enough to protect the public.
"It's not clear to me that we want a private company making that
fundamental decision about what is political speech and how should
it be regulated," he said during the interview. "It seems like
that's something there should be a more democratic process
around."
Facebook executives have been in the hot seat over the spread of
politically-motivated advertising and misinformation during the
U.S.'s 2016 presidential election and others.
Mr. Zuckerberg said the company has been more proactive in
figuring out where there might be issues and investing
appropriately to handle them.
While he stopped short of guaranteeing that similar
disinformation campaigns wouldn't be found on the company's
platforms, he said, "Our job is to make the defenses stronger and
stronger, to make it harder for them to do what they're doing and
to build the right partnerships with other folks in the industry
and in the intelligence community. So that way, together, we can
get a good sense of what is going on out there and help keep this
safe."
He added Facebook is spending more on safety and security in
2019 than its total revenue in 2012, which was $5.09 billion,
according to the company's annual report.
Write to Kimberly Chin at Kimberly.Chin@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 04, 2019 10:26 ET (14:26 GMT)
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