Facebook has been under immense pressure from US lawmakers to crack down on supposedly Russia-linked political ads and bots they accused of sowing discord in the run-up to the 2016 elections as well as to combat hate speech and protect the personal data of its millions of users from being harvested by third parties such as the infamous Cambridge Analytica research firm.<\/p>\n
Zuckeberg, the founder and CEO of the scandal-ridden company, has embarked on a mission to repair its image, recently unveiling <\/a>his “privacy-focused”<\/em> vision. On Saturday, he took the damage control one step further, telling the government he’s been a bad boy and needs to be regulated.<\/p>\n Governments taking up a more active role in policing the Internet is a good thing, Zuckerberg writes in an op-ed <\/a>published by the Washington Post. Government control would actually somehow create more freedom, he argues, by setting up an Internet-sized safe space.<\/p>\n “I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators. By updating the rules for the Internet, we can preserve what’s best about it \u2014 the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things \u2014 while also protecting society from broader harms,”<\/em> Zuckergberg wrote.<\/p>\n READ MORE:\u00a0\u2018Soft child-porn\u2019 or honest political debate? Take a guess which one YouTube failed to censor<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n He proposes regulators to focus on four key areas that he believes are in need of government oversight, which are “harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.”<\/em><\/p>\n Zuckerberg lamented that his company has been allowed to get away with too much control over freedom of speech, and suggested it should be somebody else’s problem \u2013 somebody selected by politicians. “Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree,”<\/em> he wrote, adding that he believes that it should be done on their behalf by an independent body, that would set the rules Facebook and others would then have to follow.<\/p>\n Facebook along with Twitter were accused of bias and censorship after they purged hundreds of alternative media pages ahead of the November 2018 midterm elections. Most recently, Facebook imposed a ban on any praise of “white nationalism”<\/em> and “white separatism”<\/em> prompting more free speech concerns. In February, it blocked<\/a> several RT-linked pages, operated by a German-based company, for not revealing their “ties” to Russia, a move that again drew accusations of “blatant censorship.”<\/em><\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n
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\n Facebook adds white nationalism to blacklist, because when has censorship ever backfired<\/span>
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