Mark Zuckerberg calls on governments to help control Internet content

Mark Zuckerberg said regulators and governments should play a more active role in controlling Internet content.

In an editorial published in the Washington Post, Facebook's chief said the responsibility to monitor harmful content was too much for companies alone.

It calls for new laws in four areas: "Harmful Content, Electoral Integrity, Confidentiality and Data Portability".

It's been two weeks since an armed man used the site to broadcast his attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand.

"Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over the word, and frankly I agree," writes Zuckerberg, adding that Facebook "created an independent body so people could appeal our decisions. "concerning what is published and what is deleted.

He also describes a new set of rules that he would like to see applied to technology companies.

These new regulations should be the same for all websites, he said, so that it's easier to prevent "harmful content" from spreading quickly across all platforms .

What does Mark Zuckerberg want?

In summary, Mr. Zuckerberg calls the following things:

• Common rules that all social media sites must follow, enforced by third-party organizations, to control the delivery of harmful content
• All major technology companies publish a transparency report every three months, on an equal footing with the financial report
• Stricter laws around the world to protect the integrity of elections, with common standards for all websites to identify political actors
• Laws that apply not only to candidates and elections, but also to other "conflicting political issues" and law enforcement outside of official campaign periods
• New industry-wide standards to control how political campaigns use data to target online voters
• More countries to adopt privacy laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union, entered into force last year
• A "common global framework" which means that these laws are all standardized on a global scale, instead of being significantly different from one country to the other
• Clear rules on who is responsible for protecting data when it is transferred from one service to another

The open letter, which will also be published in some European newspapers, comes as the social network is confronted with questions about its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal on the misuse of data during election campaigns.

The site was also criticized for its inability to stop the dissemination of images of the Christchurch mbadacre, in which 50 Muslims died while praying.

The video was viewed on the attacker's Facebook page on March 15, before being copied 1.5 million times.

Mr. Zuckerberg's letter did not specifically name these incidents.

However, the site had previously announced that it was considering imposing restrictions on live streaming as a result of the Christchurch attacks. On Thursday, he also stated that he would ban white nationalism and site separatism.

On Friday, he also began labeling the political ads appearing on Facebook in EU countries, indicating who the advertiser is, how much he paid and who he targeted.

"I think Facebook has a responsibility to help solve these problems, and I look forward to discussing it with lawmakers around the world," Zuckerberg said.