“We were late on fake news and election interference,” Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg admitted at yesterday’s Code conference, reiterating a number of claims on the matter previously made by Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg. While the development market yet another stop on the company’s global apology tour that took its top executives to a number of capitals across the world in recent months and saw them grilled by various lawmakers, Ms. Sandberg stressed that “sorry isn’t the point” and that the Menlo Park, California-based social media giant is now taking a number of actions in order to prevent future misuse of its platform and combat any existing incidents related to misinformation campaigns, hate speech, and privacy violations.
Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer attended the same event and repeated some of Ms. Sandberg’s talking points, in addition to defending the firm from monopoly claims which are now gaining traction after the European Parliament signaled it’s considering breaking Facebook apart. “If you want to share a video, YouTube’s a better place to do it,” the executive said as an example of the rivalry currently faced by the company, having also reiterated that users in all parts of the world have access to a broad range of popular messaging apps, all of which are competing with Facebook. Mr. Zuckerberg said the average mobile user relies on eight communications apps on two occasions since his Capitol Hill hearings in April but never elaborated on the matter, with at least three of those unspecified tools presumably being owned by the company itself – Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
Both Mr. Schroepfer and Ms. Sandberg said Tuesday Facebook is taking responsibility for everything that went wrong with its service in recent times, ranging from the Cambridge Analytica scandal to the proliferation of fake news meant to compromise democratic processes of various nations. Facebook’s stock completely recovered since the Cambridge Analytica debacle was detailed in late March, with the firm being expected to post another record-breaking quarter this summer.