MAUREEN SUGDEN
FACEBOOK has been embroiled in controversy for refusing to ban political advertising on its platform. Now CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced an outright commitment to "stand up for free expression”.
The background?
As the US election campaign heats up, the social media giant has been uncomfortably in the spotlight in recent months for refusing to ban political ads, even when Twitter declared that it would stop sharing political advertisements.
It has already been taking flak?
The tech giant faced criticism over its handling of fake news during recent elections, as well as allowing Cambridge Analytica to improperly harvest the data of around 87 million users. Last summer, US regulators announced a record $5 billion fine against Facebook to settle privacy concerns.
What has Zuckerberg said now?
Unveiling the social media giant's new official approach to political advertising - which he described as taking a stand for the principles of free speech - the Facebook founder said that his creation will now outright support free speech because "in order to be trusted, people need to know what you stand for”.
He’s tired of ‘PC’ culture?
In a fiery debate at the Silicon Slopes Tech Summit 2020 in Salt Lake City, Utah, Zuckerberg, 35, said he was aware the move will serve to “p*** off a lot of people", but added: "Increasingly we're getting called to censor a lot of different kinds of content that makes me really uncomfortable. We're going to take down the content that's really harmful, but the line needs to be held at some point.”
But Facebook didn’t perform so well?
It reported its slowest ever revenue growth for the fourth quarter last week, at 25%, disappointing Wall Street, with shares dropping 7.2%.
The results suggest Facebook's initial boom days of unprecedented growth are over.
It was already a bad week?
On Wednesday, Facebook said it had agreed to pay $550 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over its use of biometric facial reconigtion technology after a case that stemmed from the platform's photo-labelling utility, 'Tag Suggestions'. It uses face-matcing software to suggest the names of people in pictures posted online, but the suit said the firm violated privacy laws by harvesting facial data for these tags without permission and without telling users how long the information would be kept.
And a host of celebrities are ditching their profiles?
Earlier this month, Star Wars actor, Mark Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker, said he was leaving Facebook in fury over its approach to political adverts. He said on Twitter: "So disappointed that #MarkZuckerberg values profit more than truthfulness that I've decided to delete my @Facebook account. I know this is a big ‘Who Cares?’ for the world at large, but I'll sleep better at night.”
Who else?
Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, said he left Facebook due to growing concern for the way user data was handled. US chat show host Rosie O’Donnell tweeted Facebook, saying “can u put a new red flashing button that says I QUIT NOW - so we who want to leave ur treasonous company can”easily.
But Zuckerberg is steadfast?
He said: “It kind of feels like the list of things that you're not allowed to say socially keeps on growing, and I'm not really okay with that”.
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