Zuckerberg Advocates Internet Regulation

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post calling on regulators to take a “more active role” in making rules for how to police the internet, according to reports.

“By updating the rules for the internet, we can preserve what’s best about it — the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things — while also protecting society from broader harms,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Zuckerberg also said in his opinion piece that he wanted the government to update legislation that would protect elections, which would include new rules for online political advertising that would “reflect the reality of the threats” that social media companies have to deal with.

“Every day, we make decisions about what speech is harmful, what constitutes political advertising, and how to prevent sophisticated cyber attacks,” he wrote. “These are important for keeping our community safe. But if we were starting from scratch, we wouldn’t ask companies to make these judgments alone.”

Facebook has been in the spotlight for its own problems with policing content and privacy for its users. Also, the government and Facebook are reportedly negotiating a settlement in the neighborhood of multi-billions for the company’s privacy issues.  

In other Facebook news, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is gearing up to hold talks with state attorneys general about Facebook and Google’s position in the technology space.

According to a report in Bloomberg citing Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, the meeting had been slated for this week but will be rescheduled.  It’s common for states to work with federal agencies including the FTC and Justice Department when looking into potential misdeeds.

By teaming up, states can share the resources and information. “What we have here is different layers of problems all surrounding big tech as a whole,” Landry told Bloomberg TV. “These are issues that attorneys general around the country on both sides of the aisle have been discussing for quite some time now.”

At Google, he pointed to its role in online ads as an antitrust and consumer protection concern. “Would the FTC allow Chase or Goldman Sachs to own the Nasdaq?” Landry said. “The answer to that would be absolutely not.”