Facebook makes “too many mistakes” in the process of enforcing its policies, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg wrote Thursday. The 33-year-old said the latest decision that’s part of his traditional New Year’s resolutions will be to address all “important issues” that arise in regards to Facebook and the effect it has on the world. In a publicly shared Facebook post, Mr. Zuckerberg compared the current cultural climate to 2009 when he started practicing his annual resolutions, suggesting that the “anxious and divided” world we’re currently living in is the main reason why Facebook has its work cut out for it this year.
The multi-billionaire’s comments were largely directed at many controversies pertaining to the so-called “fake news” phenomenon and various recorded instances of hate speech being promulgated by Facebook’s algorithms, both of which ultimately prompted the company to significantly strengthen its content review teams in an effort to combat the dissemination of illegal and factually inaccurate content designed to mislead and deceive. Despite significant financial commitments, Facebook’s current endeavors related to combating such content remain largely ineffective, in part due to the inconsistent M.O. of its human reviewers and the fact that its artificial intelligence technologies may not be advanced enough to reliably combat falsified news stories and illegal content on their own. The Menlo Park, California-based social media giant remains adamant it’s on the right track and will continue improving its practices going forward.
Besides content policy enforcement, Mr. Zuckerberg labeled Facebook’s efforts to combat any “misuse” of its digital tools as another area that warrants improvement in regards to the volume of mistakes that are made. The entrepreneur’s recent address also raised the issue of technological centralization that many perceive to be against what the Silicon Valley was promising in the last century as contemporary technologies are more often used by centralized political structures instead of giving more power to the people like some were hoping they will. His remarks on the matter were vague but suggested Facebook may soon be looking to decentralize some aspects of the most popular social media network on the planet, though it remains to be seen how it could go about doing so over the course of this year.