We see the best and worst of humanity, says FB COO Sheryl Sandberg

Grappling with the best and the worst of humanity, a quarterly transparency report from next year and content regulations are some of the steps listed by Facebook Operating Officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg to deal with major content concerns and privacy issues.

Committed to weed out the "bad" content, Sandberg said at the first International Press Day at the company's sprawling headquarters in Menlo Park that Facebook was working with governments on content regulations.

"We see the very best and we actually see some of the very worst of humanity. And what we are focused on right now is making sure that we are running our company differently so that we do everything we can to prevent the bad, but that we are really allowing it to continue, " said Sandberg in an interaction with mediapersons from across the the world.

Battling issues like disinformation, political campaigns, privacy and fake news, the Facebook COO who has been in thick of controversies, spelt out a roadmap to deal with the concerns.

"We really changed the way we run the company. We're making massive investments, which are billions of dollars in safety and security. We're working directly with governments around the world to do things like protect elections, are working really hard with our internal teams, with our product teams with other companies to find that actors and take them down.

"If you look at the Transparency Report we are filing and we are filing that every six months. By next year, we're going to be filing it every quarter. And we're going to put it out just like earnings with our press call because we think the content on our site is just as important, " she said.

On the concerns regarding the size and influence of big technology companies, Sandberg said that regulations on content was important.

"We're calling for regulation in areas like privacy in areas like content. in areas like data portability, we think we need a more robust regulatory framework. And we're working hard and trying to leaders around the world on laws and all of those areas.

"I think one of the most important things we're doing though, because the regulatory process can be slow, is going ahead of regulation," she added.

(Gautam Datt can be contacted at datt.gautam@gmail.com)

--IANS

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