Zuckerberg says breaking Facebook "will not help" – TechCrunch

With the look of someone betrayed, Facebook The CEO fought back against co-founder Chris Hughes and his editorial on the NYT calling regulators to split Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. "When I read what he wrote, my main reaction was that what he proposes to do will do nothing to help solve these problems. So, I think if you care about democracy and elections, you want a company like us to be able to invest billions of dollars a year, as we do to build really advanced tools to fight against terrorism. 39, electoral interference, "Zuckerberg told France Info. in Paris to meet French President Emmanuel Macron.

Zuckerberg's argument boils down to the idea that the dismantling of society will not solve Facebook's specific privacy, security, misinformation and speech problems, which would hamper his efforts to protect his social networks. . The family of Facebook applications would theoretically have less economies of scale by investing in security technologies such as artificial intelligence to spot robots propagating the content of the electoral crackdown.

Hughes claims that "Mark's power is unprecedented and anti-American," and that Facebook's widespread acquisitions and copies have made it so dominant that it discourages competition. The call echoes other top leaders such as Facebook's first president, Sean Parker, and growth leader, Chamath Palihapitiya, who have raised alarms about the impact of the social network they created on the society.

But Zuckerberg says that the size of Facebook benefits the public. "Our budget for security this year is greater than the overall revenue of our company when we went public earlier this decade. This is largely because we have been able to build a successful business that can now support this. You know, we invest more in security than anyone else in social media, "Zuckerberg told journalist Laurent Delahousse.

The media have largely missed the Facebook CEO, especially because the television interview was heavily dubbed in French, without transcription. His quotes, written here for the first time, offer a window into the depth with which Zuckerberg dismisses Hughes' claims. "Well [Hughes] was talking about a very specific idea of ​​breaking up the business to solve some of the social problems we face, "says Zuckerberg before attempting to separate the solutions from the anti-trust regulations. "In my opinion, there are real problems. There are real problems with harmful content and the search for the right balance between expression and security, to prevent electoral interference and privacy. "

To say that a breakup "will do nothing to help" is a more unequivocal rebuttal of Hughes' assertion than that of Facebook's vice president of communications and former British Prime Minister Nick Clegg. . He wrote in his New York Times editorial today: "What matters is not the size, but the rights and interests of consumers, as well as our responsibility to governments and legislators who oversee trade and communications. . . Big in itself is not bad. Success should not be penalized.

We must certainly do something to protect consumers. Maybe it's a Facebook break. At a minimum, prohibiting it from acquiring more social networks of sufficient size to prevent it from releasing another Instagram account from its cradle would be a quick and workable remedy.

But the most important point of the Hughes editorial was the way he identified blocked users on Facebook. "Competition alone should not encourage privacy – regulation is needed to ensure accountability – but Facebook's blocking of the market ensures that users can not protest by opting for privacy." other platforms, "he writes. After Cambridge Analytica, "people have not left massively the platforms of society. After all, where would they go?

This is why, given the call for competition from critics and Zuckerberg's support for interoperability, a fundamental principle of regulation should allow users to switch more easily from Facebook to another social network. As I will discover in a future article, until users can easily bring their friends or their "social graph" elsewhere, there is not much that forces Facebook to treat them better.