2018: Zuckerberg set to check fake news, abuse of Facebook

In what appears to be a response to the growing concern that Facebook is fuelling fake news, and controversies surrounding Facebook Live and its potential for nefarious use, Facebook founder, Mark Zukerberg, has revealed that his focus in 2018 would be to protect the Facebook community from abuse.

Zukerberg, whose net worth is over $70billion, according to Forbes, said, “ My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues. We won’t prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools. If we are successful this year , then we will end 2018 on a much better trajectory.’’

The Facebook chief expresseed worry over the level of distrust society has towards silicon valley’s biggest players. He said despite measures to take power from centralized systems and give power to the people. The risk of being harder to control is something to worry about,stating that giving power to the people is
one of the core missions of Facebook.

“For example, one of the most interesting questions in technology right is about centralization vs decentralization. A lot of us got into technology because we believe it can be a decentralizing force
that puts more power in people’s hands. ( The first four words of Facebook’s mission have always been “give power to the people’’).

Back in the 1990s and 2000, most people believed technology would be a decentralizing force. But today, many people have lost faith in that promise. 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 decentralize it.

There are important counter- trends to this – like encryption and cryptocurrency – that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I’m interested to go deeper and study positive and negative aspects of these technologies and how best to use them in our services.’’