Facebook founder, chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has given a wide-ranging interview where he addressed why it took the company so long to react to the security issues, his control over the news cycle and what he’s most sorry about.
Zuckerberg spoke to Recode. The question of Russian interference in the US Presidential election was addressed was addressed with Zuckerberg saying “Well, the evidence that we’ve seen is quite clear, that the Russians did try to interfere with the election”.
When pushed on why he didn’t push Facebook to do something earlier he replied “We just weren’t looking for these kind of information operations. We have a big security operation. We were focused on traditional types of hacking. We found that and notified both the government and the people who were at risk, but there’s no doubt we were too slow to identify this new kind of attack, which was a coordinated online information operation”.
But when it comes to disinformation, he seemed to have an ambiguous perspective on what Facebook should publish or remove. For example, he said that Holocaust deniers should be allowed a voice while people who deny the Sandy Hook school shootings shouldn’t.
When it comes to whose head should roll for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Zuckerberg was pretty clear.
“I designed the platform, so if someone’s going to get fired for this, it should be me. And I think that the important thing going forward is to make sure that we get this right”.
The interview is worth reading and Kara Swisher does not let him off the hook on some of the tougher issues.
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