Zuckerberg Lays Out Broad Vision for Facebook in New Mission Statement--Update
February 16 2017 - 7:38PM
Dow Jones News
By Deepa Seetharaman
After a year of controversy over Facebook Inc.'s role in
spreading misinformation and handling violent images, Chief
Executive Mark Zuckerberg now is positioning the company as the
backbone of what he hopes will be a new "social infrastructure"
addressing some of humanity's biggest problems.
In a nearly 6,000-word manifesto Thursday, Mr. Zuckerberg
outlined ambitions for the 13-year-old social network to play a
larger role in tackling issues including terrorism, disease and
climate change, alongside the work of governments, nonprofit
organizations and other companies.
Facebook is investing more in building products that can
alleviate some of these issues, Mr. Zuckerberg wrote, outlining few
concrete steps. He also said Facebook was developing tools to more
effectively fight the spread of misinformation; detect terrorist
propaganda through artificial intelligence, and to promote
political engagement, both nationally and globally.
"Today's threats are increasingly global, but the infrastructure
to protect us is not," Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. "Humanity's current
systems are insufficient to address these issues."
The post underscores how much Facebook has evolved since its
founding in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room. From its start as a social
hub for college students, it has become a powerful shaper of views
and an essential hub of information, social ties and communication
for its nearly two billion monthly users -- roughly a quarter of
the world's population.
"For the past decade, Facebook has focused on connecting friends
and families," the 32-year-old CEO wrote in the note, published on
Facebook. "With that foundation, our next focus will be developing
the social infrastructure for community -- for supporting us, for
keeping us safe, for informing us, for civic engagement, and for
inclusion of all."
The post also comes after a trying year at Facebook, which faced
criticism for, among other things, the design of its news feed,
which put legitimate news sites on equal footing with those
peddling misinformation during the U.S. presidential campaign. The
company also drew fire for failing to catch violent live videos and
for inconsistently applying its content standards, such as when it
deleted posts containing a famous Vietnam War photo of a naked girl
fleeing napalm bombs last fall. After considerable public uproar,
Facebook reversed that decision.
Mr. Zuckerberg has, at times, struggled to articulate a coherent
response to these concerns, sparking both public and internal
backlash. Speaking at a conference two days after the U.S.
election, he dismissed accusations that fake news on Facebook
tipped the election as a "crazy idea." This didn't go over well
with many employees who argued that the social network should be
doing more to confront fake news as well as the "filter bubble" in
which many users see few ideas or information different from their
own, current and former employees said at the time.
Just over a week later, Mr. Zuckerberg changed his stance,
saying that while Facebook didn't want to be in the position of
determining the truth, the company takes hoaxes very seriously.
Since then, Facebook has taken steps to curb fake news through
partnerships with fact-checking organizations and tweaks to its
algorithm to demote news items that are deemed "disputed." It also
is investing in news literacy and working more closely with
publishers.
Thursday, Mr. Zuckerberg said fake news and filter bubbles
worried him, but a greater concern is "polarization."
Facebook wants to show users a wider range of perspectives and
demote sensationalized news, but has to be careful to do so without
deepening divisions, Mr. Zuckerberg wrote, citing research showing
that people hold tighter to their beliefs when confronted with an
opposing view. "Our goal must be to help people see a more complete
picture, not just alternate perspectives," he wrote.
Additionally, Facebook is revamping the way it handles
objectionable content to give users the ability to set parameters
on how much nudity, violence, profanity and graphic content they
can tolerate, Mr. Zuckerberg said. For users who don't take those
steps, their settings will default to the content choices made by
the majority of users in their region.
Longer term, Mr. Zuckerberg wants to build artificial
intelligence that can detect violent content and terror-recruiting
networks. Some of that work can be done now, he said, but major
advances are still needed to build effective systems that can catch
hate speech, graphic violence or sex.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 16, 2017 19:23 ET (00:23 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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