The head of American social networking giant Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, met European Commissioners Vĕra Jourová, Margrethe Vestager, and Thierry Breton on Monday 17 February in Brussels (see EUROPE 12426/20). The seduction attempt comes 2 days before the presentation of a white paper on artificial intelligence and data strategy by the European Commission (see EUROPE 12419/11).
On the agenda of discussions between the Vice-President, Vĕra Jourová, and Mark Zuckerberg: the role of platforms in democratic processes, disinformation, and political advertising.
“We agreed on the need for further transparency of data and algorithms, so that society is more immune to online manipulation”, said Jourová in a statement issued after the meeting.
She was also pleased to “see that Facebook’s thinking is shifting and is more aligned with the European approach on various regulatory aspects”.
“I explained that whilst self-regulatory tools [...] have produced positive results [...], they need to be accompanied by some regulation and accountability for platforms, and that is what we are already working on in the European Commission”, she added.
For his part, the Internal Market Commissioner, Thierry Breton, focused on the issues of platform regulation and Facebook’s dominant position in the market.
“It’s not up to us to adapt to the platforms to make life easier for them, it’s up to them”, he told reporters after his meeting with Zuckerberg.
In an op-ed published Monday morning in the Financial Times, the Facebook chief began to unveil his cards, by advocating a regulatory framework for platforms in areas such as online hate content, privacy, and data portability.
“I believe good regulation may hurt Facebook’s business in the near term, but it will be better for everyone, including us, in the long term”, he said.
On the same day, the social network also published a white paper on its vision of what good regulation of online content would look like. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana with Sophie Petitjean)