Zuckerberg’s Tech Reg Stance Gains Senator’s Approval

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s call for regulation in the tech space on Saturday (March 30) is drawing praise: U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) said he’s “glad to see” the executive’s acknowledgment that “the era of the social media Wild West is over,” CNBC reported.

Warner told the news outlet through a statement, “Facebook needs to work with Congress to pass effective legislative guardrails, recognizing that the largest platforms, like Facebook, are going to need to be subject to a higher level of regulation in keeping with their enormous power.”

As it stands, the company has debuted plans for an independent oversight board that would have the power to overrule decisions regarding user posts. However, the outlet reported that the latest statement is “Facebook’s most explicit call to date for regulation.”

Zuckerberg’s call has elicited praise from other lawmakers as well. U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said, “Zuckerberg is right. Tech companies must be accountable for safeguarding against violent extremists and foreign adversaries. There must be strict legal limits on how platforms use our data.”

The news comes as Zuckerberg wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post that asked regulators to take a “more active role” in crafting rules for how to govern the web. Zuckerberg wrote, “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.”

In addition, Zuckerberg noted in his piece that he wanted the government to bring legislation to protect elections up to date. He wrote, “Every day, we make decisions about what speech is harmful, what constitutes political advertising, and how to prevent sophisticated cyberattacks. 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.”