Oct 18, 2019 - Technology

Zuckerberg: The 3 biggest threats to free expression include Facebook

Mike Allen
Mark Zuckerberg speaking to students at Georgetown

Mark Zuckerberg speaking. Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spoke about free expression with Georgetown University students yesterday, the first time he spoke publicly in Washington since his congressional testimony a year and a half ago.

The big picture: Zuckerberg told the students what he sees as the three biggest threats to free expression.

  1. Legal: "Laws and regulations around the world that undermine free expression and people's human rights."
  2. "[T]he platforms themselves — including us."
  3. Cultural: "[T]he impulse to restrict speech and enforce new norms around what people can say."

In a pre-speech interview, Zuckerberg told Axios' Mike Allen that Facebook has a responsibility to "design systems that can help expose the diversity of ideas, and that don't encourage polarizing content and clickbait and things like that. And we take that very seriously."

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