Each year, Facebook’s co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg issues himself a personal challenge. 2018 is no different, and this year, Zuckerberg said that he plans on focusing on fixing some of the “important issues” that are caused by his company’s global dominance.
“The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do — whether it’s protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent,” wrote Zuckerberg, in a January 4th, 2018 Facebook post. “My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues.”
Zuckerberg further stated that he recognizes that his 2018 challenge might not seem like a deeply personal one, but that he believes he’ll “learn more by focusing intensely on these issues than I would by doing something completely separate.”
“These issues touch on questions of history, civics, political philosophy, media, government and, of course, technology,” said Zuckerberg. “I’m looking forward to bringing groups of experts together to discuss and help work through these topics.”
Zuckerberg’s latest post comes in the wake of major criticism lobbed at one of the world’s largest social networks.
Facebook’s former vice president for user growth Chamath Palihapitiya publicly told Stanford University business students that he believes that the social network created “tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”
Additionally, the company spent much of 2017 addressing criticism that it didn’t do enough to mitigate foreign interference during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The company even went so far as to promise Canadians that it would help maintain the integrity of upcoming Canadian elections.
Facebook also teamed up with Ryerson University to launch the ‘Digital News Innovation Challenge,’ aimed at fostering journalism innovation in Canada.
Zuckerberg’s January 4th post further addressed the fact that “many people have lost faith” in Facebook’s promise to give people the power.
“With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it,” said Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg concluded his post by stating “this will be a serious year of self-improvement and I’m looking forward to learning from working to fix our issues together.”
Source: Facebook
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