Mark Zuckerberg Tries to Tackle Growing Criticisms

Mark Zuckerberg published a note on Thursday that laid out how Facebook plans to govern content in the future and the changes it has made in 2018. It was part of a series of notes from the under-pressure CEO on what Facebook has done to tackle the biggest issues it has faced in 2018. It comes as his leadership team is under serious scrutiny following a New York Times investigation into how it dealt with the Russia election scandal.

Getting proactive with AI

In his note, Mr. Zuckerberg was keen to emphasize the progress he thinks his firm has made this year. There was, unsurprisingly,  a large focus on AI.

He said:

The single most important improvement in enforcing our policies is using artificial intelligence to proactively report potentially problematic content to our team of reviewers, and in some cases to take action on the content automatically as well.

Mr. Zuckerburg added that the company had generally “prioritized proactively detecting content related to the most real world harm”. This included terrorism and self-harm.

Discouraging ‘Borderline Content’

The Facebook boss also said he wants to discourage what he called “borderline content.” This is sensationalist content, particularly “click-bait and misinformation”.

He conceded that while  Facebook had “made significant progress in the last year…we still have a lot of work ahead.”

Appeals Process

Mr. Zuckerburg also revealed that Facebook is expanding the appeals process that it launched earlier this year. He said users will be able to appeal any decision on a report they have filed. He also said, “we’re planning to create a new way for people to appeal content decisions to an independent body, whose decisions would be transparent and binding.”

Hitting out at Tim Cook

The note from Mr. Zuckerberg comes after he and his fellow Facebook executives came under heavy criticism following an investigation by The New York Times. Amongst many other things, it revealed that Mr. Zuckerberg responded furiously to criticism from Apple CEO Tim Cook over concerns with how Facebook deals with personal data.

Following Mr. Cook’s comments, Mr. Zuckerberg reportedly “ordered his management team to use only Android phones — arguing that the operating system had far more users than Apple’s”.