The news comes via a post on his page on the social network. Here the social media mogul said his Facebook management team are making too many errors in terms of enforcing policies and preventing misuse of Facebook’s tools. The post was notified to all Facebook users (see Digital Journal’s article “The one person who can’t be blocked on Facebook is Zuckerberg“).
Zuckerberg’s post opens with: “Every year I take on a personal challenge to learn something new. I’ve visited every US state, run 365 miles, built an AI for my home, read 25 books, and learned Mandarin.”
Indeed Zuckerberg’s previous challenges to himself have been relatively low key compared with his 2018 goal – to ‘fix’ Facebook. His earlier challenges were:
2009 – Wear a tie every day
2010 – Learn Mandarin
2011 – Only eat meat he had killed himself
2013 – Meet one person a day outside Facebook
2015 – Read a book every other week
2016 – Build a simple AI to run his home
For 2018, Zukererg said: “My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues. We won’t prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools. If we’re successful this year then we’ll end 2018 on a much better trajectory.”
These important issues include: “protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent”.
According to BBC News, all leading social media firms, including Facebook, have been criticized for allowing “fake news” to be posted, notably this intensified ahead of U.S. presidential election. Facebook in particular was called out for allowing Russia-linked political adverts to appear and these may have had an influence the outcome, according to The Independent.
