Zuckerberg: splitting Facebook will not help

Mark Zuckerberg replied Chris Hughes: Facebook's CEO finally responded to co-founder Chris Hughes and his proposal released by the NYT. Hughes asked regulators to separate Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Mark Zuckerberg sent his response from Paris during his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.

"When I read what he wrote, what I thought was that what he is proposing to do is not going to help resolve these issues. So I believe that if you are interested in democracy and elections, then you want a company like us to be able to invest billions of dollars a year in building really advanced tools to fight election interference. "

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook CEO

Zuckerberg's argument is that Facebook's specific privacy, security, and disinformation problems will not be addressed directly by the company's split, as this would hamper the efforts of the whole to safeguard its social networks .

The Facebook app family would have theoretically less financial resources to invest in security technology such as artificial intelligence that can detect bots that spread fake news by affecting voters.

Hughes had said that:

"Mark's influence is shocking, and it goes far beyond the influence of anyone else in the private sector or government. It controls three major communication platforms - Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp - used by billions of people every day.

Only Mark can decide how to configure Facebook's algorithms to determine what users see in their News Feeds, what privacy settings they can use, and which messages will be delivered. It sets the rules on how to distinguish the hate speech, violence in the discussion, or a simple verbal attack, and can choose to close a competitor by acquiring, blocking or copying.

Mark is a good man, but I'm angry with him because his focus on growth has led him to sacrifice security and courtesy for clicks. "

But Zuckerberg argues that Facebook's size benefits the public, and Reported to journalist Laurent Delahousse:

"Our security budget this year is greater than our company's total revenue when we went public earlier this decade. And this is because we have managed to create a successful business that can now support it. You know, we invest more in security than any other social media network. "

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook CEO

Zuckerberg's reasoning, of course, that dissolution "is not going to help" is an indisputable denigration of Hughes 'claim and that of former United Kingdom Under Secretary of State Nick Clegg, who supports Hughes' proposal.

"What matters is not the size but the rights and interests of consumers, as well as our accountability to governments and regulators that oversee trade and communications. . . The big one in itself is not bad. Success must not be punished. "

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook CEO

But Hughes's most extreme point was the point that said users were trapped on Facebook.

"Competition could not necessarily bring greater privacy (regulation is required to ensure accountability), but the market lock by Facebook guarantees that users can not protest by switching to alternative platforms."

"After Cambridge Analytica" people did not leave the company's platforms en masse. Where were they going? "