Mark Zuckerberg wants to know that he is doing everything he can to repair Facebook before it breaks democracy. Tonight he published a battle plan of 3,260 words to combat electoral interference. In the midst of drilling through Facebook's strategy and progress, it slips into several remarkable passages that reveal its own philosophy.
Zuckerberg has dismissed his premature skepticism and is ready to command the troops. He sees Facebook's real identity policy as a powerful weapon for the truth that other social networks lack, but that would be weakened if Instagram and WhatsApp were separated by regulators. He has finished pointing with his finger and wants everyone to work together on solutions. And he has adopted a touch of cynicism that could open his eyes and help him predict how people will misuse his creation.
Here are the most important parts of Zuckerberg's security manifesto:
Zuckerberg hugs his war tactician role
"While we want to move quickly when we identify a threat, it is also important to wait until discover as much as possible of the network before taking accounts to avoid alerting our adversaries, who otherwise would take extra steps to cover their remaining tracks, and ideally, we calculate these disassemblies to cause the maximum disruption to their operations. "
The fury that sparked on Google+, Snapchat and Facebook's IPO-killer now points to electoral attackers
"These are incredibly complex and important issues, and this has been an intense year." I bring the same focus and rigor to Address these problems that I have brought to the challenges of previous products, such as the change of our services to the mobile. "
Balancing freedom of expression and freedom of expression is complicated and expensive
"These problems are even more difficult because people do not agree about what a good result looks like or what compensations are acceptable to do.When it comes to free expression, thoughtful people come to different conclusions about the correct balances.When it comes to implementing a solution, no doubt some investors do not agree with my approach to invest so much in safety ".
Putting Twitter and YouTube in an explosion by allowing a pseudonym …
"One of the advantages of Facebook is that we have a principle that you must use your real identity. This means that we have a clear idea of what it is an authentic account, this is more difficult with services like Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube, iMessage or any other service in which you do not need to provide your real identity. "
… While defending why the Internet is safer if Facebook is not divided
"Fortunately, our systems are shared, so when we find bad actors on Facebook, we can also delete accounts linked to them in Instagram and WhatsApp, and where we can share information with other companies, we can also help them eliminate false accounts. "
Political announcements are not a business, they are supposed to be a moral duty
"In deciding on this policy, we also discussed whether it would be better to ban political announcements altogether. This seemed simple and attractive, but we decided not to do it, not because of money, since this new verification process is expensive and therefore we do not obtain any significant benefit in political announcements, but because we believe in giving voice to people. We did not want to remove an important tool that many groups use to participate in the political process. "
Zuckerberg invalidated staff to allow academic research on Facebook
"As a result of these controversies [like Cambridge Analytica] there was considerable concern among Facebook employees about allowing researchers to access the data." Ultimately, I decided that The benefits of allowing this type of academic research outweigh the risks, but we are dedicating significant resources to ensure that this research is conducted in a manner that respects the privacy of individuals and meets the highest ethical standards. "
Calling for the application of the law to intensify
"There are certain critical signals that are only accessible to law enforcement, such as money flows. Our systems make it much more difficult to set up false accounts or buy political ads from outside the country, but it would still be very difficult without additional intelligence for Facebook or others to find out if a foreign adversary had established a company in the US. I had transferred money and then registered an authentic account in our services and bought ads from the US. "
Instead of minimizing their own fault, the main actors must join forces
" Prevention of Electoral Interference It's bigger than any single organization, and now it's clear that all governments, technology companies and independent experts like the Atlantic Council need to er a better job by sharing the signs and information they have to avoid abuse. . . The last point I will make is that we are all in this together. The definition of success is that we stop cyber attacks and coordinate information operations before they can cause harm. "
The end of Zuckerberg's utopian idealism
" One of the important lessons I learned is that when you build services that connect Billions of people in different countries and cultures will see that all good humanity is capable of doing, and they will also see people trying to abuse those services in every way possible. "
