{"id":1311855,"date":"2019-06-26T21:56:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T03:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/mark-zuckerberg-at-aspen-ideas-says-combatting-election-interference-above-our-pay-grade\/"},"modified":"2019-06-26T21:56:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T03:56:00","slug":"mark-zuckerberg-at-aspen-ideas-says-combatting-election-interference-above-our-pay-grade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/mark-zuckerberg-at-aspen-ideas-says-combatting-election-interference-above-our-pay-grade\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Zuckerberg, at Aspen Ideas, says combatting election interference \u2018above our pay grade\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg addressed the Aspen Ideas Festival crowd on Wedneday.<\/strong>
Ian Wagreich \/ Aspen Ideas Festival<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told an Aspen audience Wednesday it will take the government to tighten election security for the social-media giant, saying \u201cthat type of work is a little above our pay grade.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg was a late addition to the lineup of the Aspen Ideas Festival; an announcement about his appearance came Monday afternoon. Nonetheless, a sizable crowd gathered at the Benedict Music Tent to hear him discuss the litany of issues that have dogged the company over the past few years, chiefly Russia\u2019s interference into the 2016 presidential election, privacy breaches and content moderation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a private company, we don\u2019t have the tools to make the Russian government stop,\u201d he told interviewer Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard, adding \u201cwe can defend as best as we can, but our government is the one that has the tools to apply pressure to Russia, not us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Facebook co-founder, 39, added that individual countries \u2014 not social media companies \u2014 should be determining which types of election advertising are permitted and forbidden on social media.<\/p>\n

In the run-up to the abortion ban referendum election last year in Ireland, for example, some pro-life groups from the U.S. wanted to run political advertisements on Facebook, Zuckerberg said. The Irish government told Facebook it did not have laws about foreign political advertising, so Facebook took it upon itself not to allow the ads.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring (Ireland\u2019s) election, leading up to that referendum, a bunch of pro-life American groups advertised \u2026 to try to influence public opinion there,\u201d Zuckerberg said. \u201cAnd we went to the Irish and asked folks there, \u2018Well, how do you want us to handle this? You have no laws on the books that are relevant for whether we should be allowing this kind of speech in your election, and really this doesn\u2019t feel like the kind of thing a private company should be making a decision on.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Facebook also has been grappling with \u201cdeepfake\u201d videos. A video last month of Nancy Pelosi circulated on social media showing the House speaker slurring her words. The video was doctored and spawned outcry from Democratic leaders. Technically it was not considered a deepfake video because artificial intelligence was not used to take it; rather, it appeared traditional editing techniques were used to alter the clip.<\/p>\n

Facebook left up the video, but flagged it with fact-checker warnings. Twitter also kept it, while YouTube removed it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy not make the policy as of tomorrow be that if reasonable observers could not know that it\u2019s fake, then it will be taken down?\u201d Sunstein asked.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg conceded that company fact-checkers were slow to respond and flag it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took awhile for our systems to flag that and for fact-checkers to rate it as false,\u201d he said. \u201cDuring that time, it got more distribution than our policies should have allowed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s challenge, he said, is compromising free speech rights by removing content \u2014 even when it is patently false.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a topic that can be very easily politicized,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople who don\u2019t like the way that something was cut \u2026 will kind of argue that \u2026 it did not reflect the true intent or was misinformation. But we exist in a society \u2026 where we value and cherish free expression.\u201d<\/p>\n

Monitoring videos is a delicate practice for Facebook, Zuckerberg said, noting that videos can be used for satire or other means. Other instances could be when a person in an edited film simply does not like how they are being portrayed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf (deepfake) is any video that is cut in a way that someone thinks is misleading, well, I know a lot of people who have done TV interviews that have been cut in ways they didn\u2019t like, that they thought changed the definition or meaning of what they were trying to say,\u201d he said. \u201cI think you want to make sure you are scoping this carefully enough that you\u2019re not giving people the grounds or precedent to argue that things that they don\u2019t like or changed the meaning somewhat of what they said in an interview get taken down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Facebook does not patrol for false statements, instead relying on outside people to fact-check.<\/p>\n

Concerning deepfake videos, Zuckerberg said the company might handle them differently that it does other misinformation. Facebook currently is studying the matter, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a question of whether deepfakes are actually just a completely different category of thing from normal false statements overall,\u201d he said, \u201cand I think there is a very good case that they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

rcarroll@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg addressed the Aspen Ideas Festival crowd on Wedneday.Ian Wagreich \/ Aspen Ideas Festival Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told an Aspen audience Wednesday it will take the government to tighten election security for the social-media giant, saying \u201cthat type of work is a little above our pay grade.\u201d Zuckerberg was a late […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1311855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 16:55:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1311855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1311855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1311855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1311855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}