Known for annual personal goals ranging from killing his own food to learning Mandarin, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg's stated mission for this year is to 'fix' the social network. Zuckerberg began taking on New Year's challenges in 2009, when he wore a neck tie every day as a reminder of the importance of making Facebook profitable despite global financial woes.
"Today feels a lot like that first year," Zuckerberg said in a post on his Facebook page. "The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do." His list of targets at the social network included abuse and hate; interference by nation states, and, making sure visiting Facebook was time well spent. "My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues," Zuckerberg said.
"We won't prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools." He planned to gather experts to delve into topics such as politics, civics, media, and technology in pursuit of his goal.
Facebook has been striving to stymie use of its platform to spread bogus information. Google, Twitter and Facebook have come under fire for allowing the spread of bogus news - some of which was directed by Russia - ahead of the 2016 US election and in other countries.
"A lot of us got into technology because we believe it can be a decentralizing force that puts more power in people's hands," Zuckerberg said in his post. "With the rise of a small number of big tech companies - and governments using technology to watch their citizens - many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it." He cited encryption and digital currency as important trends with the potential to put power back in people's hands, and said he would explore how best to use them at Facebook services.
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