Mark Zuckerberg promised to ‘fix’ Facebook in 2018.
New Year’s resolutions are nothing out of the ordinary. Some set simple goals like losing weight, reading 30 books, or quit smoking. But when you are at the helm of one of the most successful social media companies in the history of the world, you have to kick it up a notch. That is what Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has decided to do. The multi-billionaire announced this Thursday in a Facebook post that 2018 will be the year where he will “fix” the social media platform.
In his post, Zuckerberg reflected on Facebook’s responsibility of protecting its users and providing a safe environment for all people regardless of their ethnic background or social status. More so, the CEO stressed how the social platform has to do better in defending “interference by nation states”.
This statement, no doubt, stems from the backlash that Facebook endured last year from both the US government and its user base. Facebook was in hot waters in 2017 after the tech company admitted it played a part in Russia’s interference with the 2016 presidential campaign by acting as a propaganda tool for Russian hackers. In addition, the platform’s ad-targeting features permitted companies to find potential customers by using racial and derogatory terms.
“We won’t prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools,” Zuckerberg wrote.
By addressing existing problems, the CEO wants to steer the company on a trajectory that will strengthen the platform and re-gain the trust of its peers.
Facebook is not the only social media platform that was criticized for their role in the 2016 election. Executives from Twitter and Google were also brought down to Washington to answer for how the tech companies failed to handle the spread of “fake news” and how it eventually harmed the presidential election.
Zuckerberg said that he will collaborate with groups of experts to find ways in which they can address Facebook’s problems that touch on subjects like media, government and “of course, technology”.
Image Source: Flickr
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