Zuckerberg Tells EU Regulators Facebook Wants More Content Liability
February 17 2020 - 01:20PM
Dow Jones News
By Valentina Pop
BRUSSELS -- Mark Zuckerberg called on the European Union's top
regulator to create customized legislation for online platforms,
with the Facebook chief executive accepting some responsibility for
the content shared by users. But not all EU officials were
impressed.
"When it comes to developing these kinds of regulations, we
believe that what is best for Europe will be best for Facebook and
the internet ecosystem over time," he told reporters on Monday.
In meetings here with members of the European Commission, the
bloc's executive arm in charge of drafting legislation, Mr.
Zuckerberg made the case for online platforms to be regulated
somewhere between newspapers, which shoulder full liability for the
content they publish, and telecommunications operators, which hold
no responsibility for the messages they relay.
Mr. Zuckerberg said regulators should consider requiring
internet platforms to report more frequently about the content that
they detect and take down due to concerns about terrorism, graphic
violence, hate speech or child exploitation.
"We currently issue transparency reports every six months. I'd
like to take it down to every three months," he told a group of
journalists, adding that transparency reports should be paired with
quarterly financial reporting. "These issues are as important as
the financial reporting that we do."
Some countries in Europe, notably France and the U.K., are
considering rules requiring platforms to take down hateful content
within tight time frames. Facebook disagrees with this approach. In
a white paper published Monday, the company said that a 24-hour
deadline "would create still more perverse incentives," as
companies would focus on the deadline irrespective of how many
people watch the content, whereas priority should be given to
content that goes viral.
Facebook's white paper came just two days before the EU is
expected to release its own white paper on coming regulation
governing artificial intelligence and amid efforts to get companies
to share more data in Europe. The commission is also in the process
of considering stricter liability rules for online platforms, with
a Digital Services Act expected to be put forward by the end of
2020.
Thierry Breton, the EU commissioner for internal markets, who
met with Mr. Zuckerberg on Monday, told reporters afterward that
the Facebook white paper "is too low in terms of responsibility.
There are interesting things, but it's not enough."
He said the commission will decide by the end of the year what
kind of liability to impose on online platforms. "I told him the
comparison with telecoms is not relevant. A message [on Facebook]
reaches hundreds of millions. On telcos you have one-on-one
communications," said Mr. Breton, who previously ran France
Télécom, currently known as Orange. "He understood our agenda and
the need to move forward," he said.
"We also discussed their market-dominant position today and what
could be their ideas to avoid this," Mr. Breton said, in reference
to growing calls on both sides of the Atlantic to break up Facebook
and other tech giants. He criticized Facebook for not mentioning
its market dominance in its white paper.
Mr. Zuckerberg warned against regulation that would prevent
small enterprises from using Facebook's data-analysis services for
advertising, allowing them to do the type of marketing that only
big companies used to have resources for. He said 25 million small
businesses in Europe that support three million jobs use those
tools.
"A lot of where we see our role is in leveling the playing
field," he said.
He repeated his comments from over the weekend at the Munich
Security Conference, where he warned that China is spreading a
regulatory model that embeds authoritarianism, and that it was up
to the U.S. and Europe to get ahead and make their mark in the
regulatory race.
Mr. Zuckerberg's lobbying efforts in Brussels come after Sundar
Pichai, the CEO of Google parent Alphabet Inc. and other senior
Facebook figures have come to the EU capital to advocate regulation
that is minimally intrusive on big tech companies.
Write to Valentina Pop at valentina.pop@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 17, 2020 13:05 ET (18:05 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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