Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, says there is “no place for hate” on the social media site, adding that there is more work to be done to police hate speech, especially in Germany.
Answering a question Friday at a town hall event in Berlin, he had being instituting better controls on monitoring and removing hate posts.
According to the Associated Press, German officials have raised concerns over the ever-increasing spread of far-right and other groups’ messages of racism and hate. Last year, Zuckerberg spoke personally with Chancellor Angela Merkel about the issue.
Mark Zuckerberg tackles question on what he would do as Twitter CEO https://t.co/v3vJRTWemX by @psawers pic.twitter.com/oogW2JXp1b
— VentureBeat (@VentureBeat) February 26, 2016
Zuckerberg said “until recently in Germany I don’t think we were doing a good enough job, and I think we will keep needing to do a … better job.”
According to Zuckerberg, migrants living in Germany are now considered a “protected class” of people and will be treated as such on Facebook.
Meanwhile back home, Zuckerberg issued a companywide memo Thursday chastising employees who have been crossing out the phrase “black lives matter” and writing “all lives matter” on Facebook’s free expression walls at its Menlo Park, California, campus.
"'Black lives matter’ doesn’t mean other lives don’t," Mark Zuckerberg said: https://t.co/CSGj3ELFfM pic.twitter.com/nlwKFjPOs7
— Forbes (@Forbes) February 25, 2016
According to Gizmodo, Zuckerberg notes in the memo that there are no rules about what can be written on the chalkboards, but he considered these acts “malicious.”
“This has been a deeply hurtful and tiresome experience for the black community and really the entire Facebook community, and we are now investigating the current incidents,” he told employees in an internal company posting. He explained that “black lives matter” doesn’t mean other lives don’t. “It’s simply asking that the black community also achieves the justice they deserve.”
