Mark Zuckerberg meets France President, Emmanuel Macron

Founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has taken to Facebook to recount his meeting with the President of France, Emmanuel Macron.

MARK ZUCKERBERG AND EMMANUEL MACRON

He wrote:

“I just met with President Emmanuel Macron in Paris to discuss new rules and regulations for the internet. We both believe governments should take a more active role around important issues like balancing expression and safety, privacy and data portability, and preventing election interference — reflecting their own traditions of free speech.

Last year we invited French government officials to look at how we manage harmful content on our platforms. Our systems now proactively identify 65% of the hate speech we take down before it’s even reported — up from 24% a year ago. But there are nuanced decisions to make here, such as how we should handle content that isn’t illegal but might cause harm. This is an area where I believe companies should not make these decisions by themselves and there should be a public process with democratically elected governments.

Today the French government shared their recommendations for a new model that sets guidelines around what’s considered harmful. This would create a more consistent approach across the industry and ensure companies are held accountable for enforcing our standards against this content. While I am sure we won’t agree on everything, it’s important to get this right — people use lots of different online services and the internet should be one platform that everyone can access on the same terms. This is our first official collaboration on regulation with a government, and we’re hopeful this process could work for other countries.

Thank you to President Macron for hosting us and for your leadership on these important issues.”