Article:
This is a set of web collections curated by Mark Graham using the Archive-IT service of the Internet Archive. They include web captures of the ISKME.org website as well as captures from sites hosted by IGC.org.These web captures are available to the general public.For more information about this collection please feel free to contact Mark via Send Mail ||||| Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his mission in 2018 is to fix Facebook's large list of issues, including foreign interference on the platform, ongoing instances of harassment and potential threats to the mental health of its users. 
  
 "My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues," Zuckerberg wrote in a post on his Facebook page Thursday. "We won't prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools. If we're successful this year then we'll end 2018 on a much better trajectory." 
  
 Facebook was under much scrutiny in 2017 for a litany of issues, including admitting Russians bought ads with the intent to sway the 2016 U.S. elections. Its ad-targeting capabilities were also allowing companies to find potential customers using racially discriminatory and derogatory terms. 
  
 Facebook is facing four major challenges as it matures as a company, said Aaron Shapiro, CEO of advertising agency Huge. The company needs to find its role in society, address mental health issues, assuage users' privacy concerns and remain relevant while growing revenue. But while Facebook has done a good job at acquiring companies like Instagram, it's never really addressed the other issues until now, Shapiro said. 
  
 The most pressing issue Facebook has to address is fixing its "fake news" problem, said Ronn Torossian, founder and CEO of public relations firm 5WPR. His firm does crisis management for major technology companies. 
  
 "We're living in an era where the president of the United States — arguably the most powerful person in the world — speaks about fake news as an issue every day," Torossian said. "If you have a report coming out that says Facebook was a big purveyor of this fake news, you need to fix this thing." 
  
 Zuckerberg — who has taken on a personal challenge every year since 2009 — said in his post that one of the most interesting issues facing the technology industry is the concept of "centralization vs. decentralization." Technology was expected to give people more control over their lives, he wrote. But as a handful of technology companies become the dominant players and governments used technology to monitor citizens, people increasingly believe technology is becoming a controlling, centralized power. 
  
 "There are important counter-trends to this — like encryption and cryptocurrency — that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people's hands," Zuckerberg wrote. "But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I'm interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services." 
  
 The fact that Facebook is used by more than a billion people on a daily basis makes it both an ideal communication tool and an easy way to spread misinformation, said eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson. People see major tech companies as having vast control over their lives, and Facebook will have to learn how to balance its influence with public perception. 
  
 "Recognizing its power, and understanding how that power can be used for both good and potentially bad purposes and doing something about that is probably Facebook's biggest challenge," Williamson said. 
  
 The fact that Zuckerberg is acknowledging the problems is admirable and positive, 5WPR's Torossian said. And saying he'll do so on his Facebook page is an intelligent move. 
  
 "It's PR 101. ... He doesn't have to do an interview. He doesn't have to shout it from the rooftops. All he has to do is put it out on Facebook, and he controls the message," Torossian said. 
  
 See the full text of Zuckerberg's post below: ||||| Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sets a personal challenge each year, a kind of public New Year’s resolution that he posts about all year long. 
  
 A few years ago he set out to learn Mandarin. He also built a robot butler for his home. Last year, he toured America to spend more time with regular citizens (who were also likely Facebook users). 
  
 Zuckerberg’s goal this year: Fix Facebook. 
  
 Or at least improve some of the most important elements of Facebook that have gotten the company into hot water over the past 12 months, like its unintended role as a propaganda weapon for Russia during last year’s U.S. presidential election. 
  
 Here’s how he described it in a post on Thursday. 
  
 The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do -- whether it’s protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent. My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues. We won’t prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools. If we’re successful this year then we’ll end 2018 on a much better trajectory. 
  
 You might be thinking: Well isn’t fixing a company’s issues already the job of the CEO? 
  
 Yes, it is. And Zuckerberg seems to realize that too, adding that one of the reasons he’s choosing this challenge is so he won’t distract himself from Facebook’s important problems by going around and killing all his own food (that was his 2011 challenge). 
  
 “This may not seem like a personal challenge on its face,” Zuckerberg continued. “But I think I’ll learn more by focusing intensely on these issues than I would by doing something completely separate.” 
  
 Zuckerberg has been very philosophical over the past 12 months, regularly posting about his greater ambitions for tech and Facebook in particular. This time, Zuckerberg talked about the importance of “centralization vs decentralization” in tech — in other words, who is benefitting from tech’s tremendous power. 
  
 “A lot of us got into technology because we believe it can be a decentralizing force that puts more power in people’s hands,” he wrote. “But today, many people have lost faith in that promise. With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it.” 
  
 Facebook, of course, is one of those “big tech companies” with an immense amount of power. Not only does the company help shape the news for more than two billion people worldwide, but it controls a massive share of the global digital advertising market, which is making it difficult for smaller companies, including media companies, to survive. 
  
 But Zuckerberg says he’s thinking about all of that and taking his role as the leader of one of the world’s premier tech giants very seriously. 
  
 “This will be a serious year of self-improvement and I’m looking forward to learning from working to fix our issues together,” he wrote. 
  
 Every year I take on a personal challenge to learn something new. I've visited every US state, run 365 miles, built an... Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday, January 4, 2018 |||||Summary:

– Since 2009, Mark Zuckerberg has set a personal goal for each new year—from visiting every state to learning Mandarin to killing his own food. And 2018 is no different, with Zuckerberg challenging himself in a Facebook post to use the new year to fix Facebook's numerous high-profile problems. But isn't fixing Facebook less of a personal challenge and more of a major component of the Facebook CEO's actual job, Recode wonders. Yes and no. Zuckerberg writes, "I think I'll learn more by focusing intensely on these issues than I would by doing something completely separate." Zuckerberg will have no shortage of problems to attempt to fix in 2018. That includes harassment on Facebook and the platform's possible harmful effects on the mental well-being of its users, CNBC reports. Oh, and also the fact that Russian actors bought ads on Facebook in an attempt to sway the 2016 election. "Facebook has a lot of work to do—whether it's protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent," Zuckerberg says. And that makes for one daunting New Year's resolution.