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The world's largest social network had a tough 2018 as it was
buffeted by revelations that UK consultancy Cambridge Analytica
had improperly acquired data on millions of its U.S. users to
target election advertising.
Founder Mark Zuckerberg has been grilled by lawmakers on the
data lapses and, according to newspaper reports, U.S. regulators
are discussing fining Facebook for violating a binding agreement
to protect the privacy of its users.
"We are not the same company that we were in 2016 or even a year
ago," Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg told the DLD
Munich technology conference.
"We have a fundamentally different approach to how we run our
company today."
In Germany, Facebook is relatively less popular among users than
in other Western countries, partly due to privacy concerns
dating back to its history of Nazi and Communist rule in the
20th century.
Sandberg said Facebook had struck a new partnership with
Germany's federal cyber-security office to help to uphold the
integrity of elections and would also commit $7.5 million
towards research into the ethics of (AI) at the Technical
University in Munich.
Facebook uses AI to spot and remove terrorist content and hate
speech before it is reported to its 30,000 moderators, said
Sandberg, adding it is also important to ensure that the
technology is managed to prevent bias.
"We have to get this right; this is too important," she said.
(Reporting by Douglas Busvine; Editing by David Goodman)
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