Zuckerberg Says Not Facebook's Job to Regulate Political Ads

By Kimberly Chin

Facebook Inc. (FB) Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday it's not the role of Facebook to regulate political advertising on its platform, a response to the intense public and government scrutiny the social-media giant is facing over its handling of the spread of misinformation.

In an interview with George Stephanopoulos aired on ABC's "Good Morning America," Mr. Zuckerberg welcomed more industry or government regulation on the definition of political advertising, saying current laws weren't doing enough to protect the public.

"It's not clear to me that we want a private company making that fundamental decision about what is political speech and how should it be regulated," he said during the interview. "It seems like that's something there should be a more democratic process around."

Facebook executives have been in the hot seat over the spread of politically-motivated advertising and misinformation during the U.S.'s 2016 presidential election and others.

Mr. Zuckerberg said the company has been more proactive in figuring out where there might be issues and investing appropriately to handle them.

While he stopped short of guaranteeing that similar disinformation campaigns wouldn't be found on the company's platforms, he said, "Our job is to make the defenses stronger and stronger, to make it harder for them to do what they're doing and to build the right partnerships with other folks in the industry and in the intelligence community. So that way, together, we can get a good sense of what is going on out there and help keep this safe."

He added Facebook is spending more on safety and security in 2019 than its total revenue in 2012, which was $5.09 billion, according to the company's annual report.

Write to Kimberly Chin at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 04, 2019 10:26 ET (14:26 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.