Zuckerberg call for global internet rules

Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has called for a rewrite of the rules governing the internet.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Picture: AP

Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has called for a rewrite of the rules governing the internet and said governments and regulators should play a more active role in promoting and enforcing standards for political advertising, harmful content, privacy and data portability.

Mr Zuckerberg said there should be a standardised approach around the world and called for politicians to build on the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.

Facing mounting global criticism over misuse of data and the proliferation of hate speech, and demands for regulation after the live streaming of the Christchurch massacre, Mr Zuckerberg said he agreed with politicians who said Facebook had too much power over speech.

“If we were starting from scratch, we wouldn’t ask companies to make these judgments alone,” Mr Zuckerberg wrote in an article for the Washington Post.

“I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators. By updating the rules for the internet, we can preserve what’s best about it — the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things — while also protecting society from broader harms,” Mr Zuckerberg wrote.

The article is the latest in a series of moves unveiled by Facebook after it was roundly condemned for hosting a 17 minute-long live stream of the Christchurch massacre last month.

The secretary of the NSW Department of Education and former ABC managing director Mark Scott backed regulation and said Facebook had to do better after a number of school students saw the video on the day and over the weekend.

“I think it is fundamentally unacceptable for an organisation like Facebook or Twitter, given their wealth and given their scale, to be unable to exercise faster and more appropriate control over their content and identification of content that is harmful, Mr Scott told The Australian.

”The risk that we have of young people having exposure to truly terrible content disseminated by people who are trying to disseminate harm. Even if they have a very good moderation program, they are still missing tens of thousands of suspect pieces of content every week.”

While fewer than 200 people reportedly watched the original live video of the Christchurch massacre, around 4000 people saw the post containing the video, and many saved and reposted it. Facebook says 900 different videos were posted showing portions of the horrifying 17 minutes.

Facebook had removed up to 1.5 million copies of these videos, but removed only 1.2 million before they were viewed publicly.

Facebook chief operating officer Cheryl Sandberg said the social media giant was exploring ways to restrict who could live-stream by using factors such as prior community standard violations.

Secondly, Sandberg says Facebook will undertake research to build better technology to quickly identify edited versions of violent videos and images, and prevent people from re-sharing these versions. That followed an announcement late last week that Facebook would ban content that praised or supported white nationalist and white separatist views.

Attorney-General Christian Porter plans to introduce legislation this week imposing potential jail sentences and serious financial penalties for technology platforms that fail to take down material like the Christchurch video in a reasonable time.

Ms Sandberg said Facebook was using its existing AI tools to remove a range of hate groups in Australia and New Zealand.