Broken Code by Jeff Horwitz

Author:Jeff Horwitz [Horwitz, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2023-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

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On October 17, 2019, Zuckerberg took to the ornate podium at Georgetown’s Gaston Hall to deliver a rare public address, on the subject of free speech. The grand hall’s murals and Jesuit crests gave the event the feel of a sermon, and Facebook’s PR team had certainly pitched it as such.

Zuckerberg began by acknowledging the death earlier that day of Maryland congressman Elijah Cummings, whose illustrious civil rights career began at age eleven, when he was attacked by a white mob while integrating a Baltimore pool, leaving him with a lifelong facial scar.

“He was a powerful voice for equality, social progress, and bringing people together,” Zuckerberg told the crowd. Then he made the case that Facebook stood for those values, too.

Zuckerberg said he had created Facebook because he believed that progress came from regular people having a voice, crediting that conviction to being in college at the time of the Iraq War. “I remember feeling that if more people had a voice to share their experiences, maybe things would have gone differently,” he said. “Those early years shaped my belief that giving everyone a voice empowers the powerless and pushes society to be better over time.”

But, Zuckerberg said, he was worried that the commitment to free, democratic speech in America might be wavering. “In times of social turmoil, our impulse is often to pull back on free expression,” Zuckerberg told the crowd. “We want the progress that comes from free expression, but not the tension.”

Amid an onslaught from legislators, the media, and the public, Zuckerberg was doubling down on his, and his platform’s, preference for free speech. He made clear he was no absolutist, citing Facebook’s commitment to curbing terrorist propaganda, the bullying of young people, and pornography. But, beyond that, he asked, “Where do you draw the line?

“Most people agree with the principles that you should be able to say things other people don’t like, but you shouldn’t be able to say things that put people in danger,” Zuckerberg continued, before making a long argument that expanding the definition of “dangerous speech” could be risky.

Facebook had built systems, many of them powered by AI, to address around twenty categories of harmful content, he said. “All of this work is about enforcing our existing policies, not broadening our definition of what is dangerous,” he said.

When it came to misinformation, rather than directly addressing falsehoods on the platform, Zuckerberg said, the company had found a better strategy: making sure the accounts were authentic, and removing those that were not, including bots. The true fight wasn’t against polarization and misinformation, he said. It was against those who “no longer trust their fellow citizens with the power to communicate and decide what to believe for themselves.”

And there, Zuckerberg said, Facebook would hold the line. Social media was “a Fifth Estate,” he declared, giving its users the ability to speak up against the “traditional gatekeepers in politics or media.” A social network was a uniquely democratic force, incompatible with a repressive government like that of China, and Americans needed to stand up for it.

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