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Facebook Vice President Nick Clegg said on Sunday that his company is counting on Congress to take action that will change the way the social networking platform does its business.
After a Senate hearing that included harsh criticism of former Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen, Mr Clegg, former UK deputy prime minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats, said in ABC’s “This Week” that some things are just government. can do.
“I think if there’s a glimmer of hope for this week, maybe it’s that now we can move beyond slogans, phrasing, simple cartoons and actually look for solutions and yes and of course regulations,” said Mr. Clegg. “There are certain things only lawmakers can do: only lawmakers can change Section 230, only lawmakers can enact federal secrecy law, only lawmakers can pass laws to protect our elections, and so on. And that’s no substitute for the responsibility Facebook has.”
At last week’s hearing, Connecticut Democrat Ms. Haugen and Senator Richard Blumenthal compared the social media company to Big Tobacco companies over its claims about the harm its products cause to children.
The Facebook executive called such a comparison an “extremely misleading analogy”.
“Of course, we will try to make ourselves more transparent so that people can hold us accountable,” Mr Clegg told ABC. “We understand that with success comes responsibility, criticism, scrutiny, responsibility, and as such, we are the first Silicon Valley company to set up an independent oversight board that independently evaluates these difficult content decisions.”
Facebook’s Democratic critics in Congress are fed up with tech platforms’ talk about moderating their users. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota told CNN she was pleased to hear Mr. Clegg was willing to talk about policy changes, but “the time to speak is over, now is the time to act.
“Basically, social media companies and other tech platforms have been saying ‘Trust us, we get it’ for a very long time. Look where we are now,” said Ms. Klobuchar. “The man on the street told me on social media that his mother-in-law won’t be vaccinated because he read on social media that he’s going to implant a microchip in his arm. We know that the majority of people who don’t get vaccinated read stuff on these platforms.”
Ms. Klobuchar said she thinks Congress should enact privacy law and update its “competition policy”, which refers to antitrust laws affecting tech companies.
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