Facebook’s plans for regulating Big Tech have not met the expectations of some bigwigs in EU leadership.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg toured Brussels earlier this week, meeting with press and politicians and also publishing a white paper on regulating Big Tech called “Charting the Way Forward: Online Content Regulation.” EU officials, however, were dissatisfied with Zuckerberg’s regulatory plan. French commissioner Thierry Breton rejected the proposal as “not enough,” and even threatened that if Zuckerberg fails to meet the European Commission’s standards “we will have to regulate,” reported the Financial Times.
Facebook’s white paper proposal illustrated a handful of critical principles for regulators going forward. These included incentives to accommodate values such as “safety, privacy, and freedom of expression.” It further directed future regulation to respect the global nature of the internet in that sovereign nations should not be restricted by the laws of others, and it cautioned that regulators must be conscious of their impact on freedom of expression as it relates to the content in question through an understanding of the capabilities and limitations of technology.
Breton suggested that Facebook’s regulation proposal is just another attempt at dragging its feet when it comes to solutions on cleaning up the platform. “It’s not enough,” Breton said. “It’s too slow, it’s too low in terms of responsibility and regulation.” Breton also observed how “If we see that it’s not what we need regarding our own standards, we will have to regulate and put this in our [Digital Services Act].”
Financial Times described the document that outraged so many European bureaucrats,
“The 13-page document suggested that there should be global, rather than national, policies on what is permissible and that internet companies should not face any liability for content on their platforms or free speech would be limited.”
Echoing conservative concerns about Big Tech’s lack of transparency, the commission’s vice-president in charge of transparency and values, Vera Jourova, called to have an “audit” on the “black box” systems that run so much of the internet.
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Jourova commented after her meeting with Zuckerberg how she wants “companies like Facebook to make an extra effort to help defend our democracies.” She further added that “This will require looking at transparency and oversight of algorithms to avoid decisions being taken in black boxes and in the ways they moderate content ... Facebook cannot push away all the responsibility.”
Margrethe Vestager, EU competition commissioner, is reportedly examining Facebook Marketplace. According to Financial Times, a Facebook spokesperson said that this examination at least appears to be on good terms. “Executive vice-president Vestager and Mr[.] Zuckerberg had a meeting earlier today,” the spokesperson reportedly said. “They had a good exchange on current issues in the digital sector.”
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