Facebook's Zuckerberg in Paris to Talk Elections, Online Hate
Facebook's Zuckerberg in Paris to Talk Elections, Online Hate
(Bloomberg) -- French President Emmanuel Macron and Facebook Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg are meeting in Paris on Friday, one year after the social media and advertising company pledged to open its doors and algorithms to a government team to keep online hate speech in check.
The meeting with Macron is part of Zuckerberg’s work “to discuss future regulation of the Internet” with leaders, the company said, including “the co-regulation pilot” decided last year with French authorities.
The government-led team that sat in the Californian company’s French offices will publish its findings from the “evaluation of the self-regulation mechanisms implemented by Facebook,” according to the Elysee Presidential palace.
Last year, authorities said that if the experiment proved satisfactory, it could be extended to other domains like data privacy, and to other countries in Europe, and serve as a basis for redefining how the law deals with hate speech, French officials said. France is eyeing an upgrade to its hate speech laws sometime next year, they said.
The meeting is part of Macron’s broader “Tech for Good” initiative started in 2018 that this year will include a “Christchurch call” with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. The two leaders plan to co-chair a meeting of global leaders and technology company executives on May 15 as they aim to curb the promotion of violent extremism online.
To contact the reporters on this story: Helene Fouquet in Paris at hfouquet1@bloomberg.net;Marie Mawad in Paris at mmawad1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Geraldine Amiel, James Regan
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