Tag Archives: Mark Zuckerberg

Martin Luther King’s daughter tells Facebook disinformation helped kill civil rights leader

Martin Luther King’s daughter tells Facebook disinformation helped kill civil rights leader
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Disinformation campaigns helped lead to the assassination of Martin Luther King, the daughter of the U.S. civil rights champion said on Thursday after the head of Facebook said social media should not factcheck political advertisements.

The comments come as Facebook Inc  is under fire for its approach to political advertisements and speech, which Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg defended on Thursday in a major speech that twice referenced King, known by his initials MLK.

King’s daughter, Bernice, tweeted that she had heard the speech. “I’d like to help Facebook better understand the challenges #MLK faced from disinformation campaigns launched by politicians. These campaigns created an atmosphere for his assassination,” she wrote from the handle @BerniceKing.

King died of an assassin’s bullet in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.

Zuckerberg argued that his company should give voice to minority views and said that court protection for free speech stemmed in part from a case involving a partially inaccurate advertisement by King supporters. The U.S. Supreme Court protected the supporters from a lawsuit.

“People should decide what is credible, not tech companies,” Zuckerberg said.

“We very much appreciate Ms. King’s offer to meet with us. Her perspective is invaluable and one we deeply respect. We look forward to continuing this important dialogue with her in Menlo Park next week,” a Facebook spokesperson said.

(Reporting by Peter Henderson; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Facebook’s Zuckerberg hits pause on China, defends political ads policy

Facebook’s Zuckerberg hits pause on China, defends political ads policy
By David Shepardson and Katie Paul

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Facebook Inc <FB.O> Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday defended the social media company’s political advertising policies and said it was unable to overcome China’s strict censorship, attempting to position his company as a defender of free speech.

“I wanted our services in China because I believe in connecting the whole world, and I thought maybe we could help creating a more open society,” Zuckerberg said, addressing students at Georgetown University.

“I worked hard on this for a long time, but we could never come to agreement on what it would take for us to operate there,” he said. “They never let us in.”

He did not address what conditions or assurances he would need to enter the Chinese market.

Facebook tried for years to break into China, one of the last great obstacles to Zuckerberg’s vision of connecting the world’s entire population on the company’s apps.

Zuckerberg met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing and welcomed the country’s top internet regulator to Facebook’s campus. He also learned Mandarin and posted a photo of himself running through Tiananmen Square, which drew a sharp reaction from critics of the country’s restrictive policies.

The company briefly won a license to open an “innovation hub” in Hangzhou last year, but it was later revoked.

Zuckerberg effectively closed that door in March, when he announced his plan to pivot Facebook toward more private forms of communication and pledged not to build data centers in countries “that have a track record of violating human rights like privacy or freedom of expression.”

He repeated his concern about data centers on Thursday, this time specifically naming China.

Zuckerberg also defended the company’s political advertising policies on similar grounds, saying Facebook had at one time considered banning all political ads but decided against it, erring on the side of greater expression.

Facebook has been under fire over its advertising policies, particularly from U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The company exempts politicians’ ads from fact-checking standards applied to other content on the social network. Zuckerberg said political advertising does not contribute much to the company’s revenues, but that he believed it would be inappropriate for a tech company to censor public figures.

Reuters reported in October 2018, citing sources, that Facebook executives briefly debated banning all political ads, which produce less than 5% of the company’s revenue.

The company rejected that because product managers were loath to leave advertising dollars on the table and policy staffers argued that blocking political ads would favor incumbents and wealthy campaigners who can better afford television and print ads, the sources said.

Facebook has been under scrutiny in recent years for its lax approach to fake news reports and disinformation campaigns, which many believe affected the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, won by Donald Trump.

Trump has disputed claims that Russia has attempted to interfere in U.S. elections. Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied it.

Warren’s Democratic presidential campaign recently challenged Facebook’s policy that exempts politicians’ ads from fact-checking, running ads on the social media platform containing the false claim that Zuckerberg endorsed Trump’s re-election bid.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Writing by Katie Paul; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

FBI director warns Facebook could become platform of ‘child pornographers’

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – FBI Director Christopher Wray said Friday that Facebook’s proposed move to encrypt its popular messaging program would turn the platform into a “dream come true for predators and child pornographers.”

Wray, addressing a crowd of law enforcement and child protection officials at the Department of Justice in Washington, said that Facebook’s plan would produce “a lawless space created not by the American people or their representatives but by the owners of one big company.”

Facebook intends to add encryption of wide swathes of communications on its platform.

His speech, which came ahead of an address on the same topic by Attorney General William Barr, ratchets up the pressure on Facebook as the U.S. and allied governments renew their push to weaken the digital protections around the messages billions of people exchange each day.

Wray’s speech is part of a renewed push by the American, Australian, and British governments to force tech companies to help them circumvent the encryption that helps keeps digital communications secure.

Debates over encryption have been rumbling for more than 25 years, but officials’ anxiety has increased as major tech companies move toward automatically encrypting the messages on their platforms and the data held on their phones.

In the past, officials have cited the threat of terrorism to buttress their campaigns again encryption. But as the Islamic State and other extremist groups fade from the headlines, governments are trying a different tack, invoking the threat of child abuse to argue for “lawful access” to these devices.

Facebook’s privacy-focused move, announced by founder Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year, is causing particular consternation because the platform is the source of millions of tips to authorities about child abuse images every year.

Zuckerberg, speaking on the company’s weekly internal Q&A Livestream, defended the decision, saying he was “optimistic” that Facebook would be able to identify predators even in encrypted systems using the same tools it used to fight election interference.

“We’re going to lose the ability to find those kids who need to be rescued,” Wray said. “We’re going to lose the ability to find the bad guys.”

However, many of those outside the law enforcement have applauded Facebook’s push for privacy and security. Academics, experts, and privacy groups have long worried that circumventing the protections around private communications would open dangerous vulnerabilities that could make the entire internet less safe — and leave billions of users exposed to abusive surveillance.

Wray steered clear of making any specific proposal, saying that “companies themselves are best placed” to offer a way for law enforcement to get around encryption.

(Reporting by Raphael Satter; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Facebook CEO starts second day of U.S. congressional hearings

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is surrounded by members of the media as he arrives to testify before a Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees joint hearing regarding the company’s use and protection of user data, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 10, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Milli

By Dustin Volz and David Ingram

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg started a second day of testimony on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, facing more questions from lawmakers about data privacy at the world’s largest social media network.

The 33-year-old internet magnate, once again wearing a dark suit instead of his usual gray T-shirt, appeared before the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, a day after he took questions for nearly five hours in a U.S. Senate hearing.

He navigated through the first hearing on Tuesday without making any further promises to support new legislation or change how the social network does business, foiling attempts by senators to pin him down.

Investors were impressed with his initial performance. Shares in Facebook posted their biggest daily gain in nearly two years on Tuesday, closing up 4.5 percent. They were down slightly in early trading on Wednesday.

Facebook has been consumed by turmoil for nearly a month, since it came to light that millions of users’ personal information was wrongly harvested from the website by Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy that has counted U.S. President Donald Trump’s election campaign among its clients. The latest estimate of affected users is up to 87 million.

Patience with the social network had already worn thin among users, advertisers and investors after the company said last year that Russia used Facebook for years to try to sway U.S. politics, an allegation Moscow denies.

Lawmakers have sought assurances that Facebook can effectively police itself, and few came away from Tuesday’s hearing expressing confidence in the social network.

“I don’t want to vote to have to regulate Facebook, but by God, I will,” Republican Senator John Kennedy told Zuckerberg on Tuesday. “A lot of that depends on you.”

Zuckerberg deflected requests to support specific legislation. Pressed repeatedly by Democratic Senator Ed Markey to endorse a proposed law that would require companies to get people’s permission before sharing personal information, Zuckerberg agreed to further talks.

“In principle, I think that makes sense, and the details matter, and I look forward to having our team work with you on fleshing that out,” Zuckerberg said.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington and David Ingram in San Francisco; Editing by Bill Rigby)