Mark Zuckerberg struggles to curry favor with the EU, with skeptical lawmakers questioning Facebook's dominance and the spread of coronavirus misinformation
- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is meeting with EU lawmakers in Brussels this week, and they're not making things easy for him.
- Zuckerberg is speaking to competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager, internal market commissioner Thierry Breton, and justice chief Vera Jourova.
- On Wednesday, Vestager and Breton are set to announce proposals to create a single European data market aimed at challenging the dominance of US tech giants like Facebook.
- The EU has fined Facebook before, slapping it with a €110 million ($120 million) penalty in 2017 after Facebook gave it misleading information about its purchase of WhatsApp.
- On Saturday, the head of the European People's Party also met with Zuckerberg and claimed Facebook had helped spread misinformation about the coronavirus.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is meeting with EU lawmakers in Brussels, and his mission to curry favor has had mixed results.
Zuckerberg is speaking to the likes of competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager, internal market commissioner Thierry Breton, and justice chief Vera Jourova.
Vestager is one of the most powerful antitrust regulators in the world, having penalized Amazon, Google, and Facebook with billions of dollars in fines.
The EU handed Facebook a €110 million ($120 million) penalty in 2017 after the firm gave it misleading information about its purchase of WhatsApp.
On Wednesday, Vestager and Breton are set to announce proposals to create a single European data market aimed at challenging the dominance of US tech giants like Facebook. It's expected the EU will also introduce new rules around facial recognition and artificial intelligence.
Zuckerberg laid the groundwork for his trip with an op-ed in the Financial Times on Sunday actively calling for greater regulation of his own company. "Good regulation will hurt Facebook's business in the near term," he wrote. Facebook also published its own blueprint of what regulating online content could look like.
But lawmakers robustly challenged the Facebook CEO.
One lawmaker said social media undermined democracy
On Saturday, Manfred Weber - the head of the European People's Party - met with Zuckerberg to talk about the challenges Facebook poses for democracy. He publicly described the meeting as a "good talk" but, a spokesman confirmed, he expressed worries that Facebook isn't taking sufficient responsibility for its impact on democracy and the spread of misinformation.
Weber sent Zuckerberg a formal letter in advance of their meeting, a copy of which was obtained by Business Insider. In the letter, Weber claimed Facebook had helped spread misinformation about the coronavirus.
He wrote: "The recent coronavirus crisis was yet another sad example where social media posts are amplified by un-transparent algorithms, with low efficient or inexistent fact-checkers. Misinformation is spreading rapidly and so is the panic among our citizens.
"Many experts have mapped out how social networks, including Facebook, acted as amplification services for websites that would otherwise receive little attention online."
He added: "[The] reality of today's internet and social media seriously undermine the ability of elected officials to govern..."
Meanwhile, Thierry Breton rejected Facebook's proposals around content moderation in its whitepaper.
"It is not enough," Breton said, according to France24. "It's too slow, it's too weak in terms of responsibility and regulation."
And Vera Jourova said after her meeting with Zuckerberg that the firm had to provide greater transparency around how its algorithms worked. "I want companies like Facebook to go the extra mile to help defend our democracies," she said according to France24. "This will require a review of the transparency and monitoring of the algorithms to avoid decisions being made in black boxes and how they moderate content."
Business Insider has approached Margrethe Vestager and Facebook for comment.