Earlier in January this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to ¡°fix¡± Facebook¡¯s biggest problems, that of fake news, harassment and abuse, and extremist content. Now, four months later, Zuckerberg sheepishly admits that the plan is nowhere near as far along as people hoped it would be.
In fact, in an interview with Wired, Zuckerberg said fixing Facebook will take at least three years to do properly. ¡°You can¡¯t just hire 30,000 people overnight to go do something,¡± Zuckerberg said. ¡°You have to make sure that they¡¯re executing well and bring in the leadership and train them. And building up AI tools -- that¡¯s not something that you could just snap your fingers on either.¡±
Zuckerberg had made it his personal challenge in 2018 to tackle all the biggest issues with the platform, including related to the allegations of election interference. ¡°We won¡¯t prevent all mistakes or abuse,¡± he said in an open letter at the time, ¡°but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools.¡±?
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Facebook began by hiring staffers to sort through user reports of terrorist-related content, sexual harassment, and more on the social network, as well as training AI to tackle some of it automatically. Of course, then the Cambridge Analytica scandal blew up in April, enraging the public when they found out just how many advertisers could access their data without their consent. Facebook was forced to go a step further, implementing stricter data privacy regulations, offering users more granular control, and even auditing developers on the platforms.
Of course, all of that takes time, possibly too much of it. If Zuckerberg had begun his personal mission perhaps a year earlier, it would have been close to halfway through now and showing better results. If the company had disclosed the data leak to users when it found out about Cambridge Analytica¡¯s antics, instead of keeping it under wraps for months, perhaps people would be a little more trusting. In tandem however, the state of affairs does not look good for Facebook with its public trust haemorrhaging in the face of apparent corporate greed.?
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Indeed, the only thing that may allow Facebook to survive this entire fiasco is the fact that the platform is an integral part of our culture now, like it or not. You can¡¯t realistically delete Facebook because that¡¯s part of how potential employers vet you, how you get your news intake, perhaps even how you look for a house to rent in a new place. So for all of you stuck with Facebook, you better hope Zuckerberg can turn things around by the end of 2020.