Mark Zuckerberg wants to ‘fix’ Facebook in 2018

He’s making it his ‘personal challenge’ for the year
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Ben Travis5 January 2018

Mark Zuckerberg has announced his intentions to ‘fix important issues’ in Facebook over the next 12 months.

The founder of the social media site posted a lengthy status update on his profile, stating that improving the way the site handles ‘abuse and hate’ is his ‘personal challenge’ for the year.

Zuckerberg writes that he has set himself a mission every year since 2009, with previous achievements including learning Mandarin and visiting every US state.

“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,” Zuckerberg posted.

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“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.

“This may not seem like a personal challenge on its face, but I think I'll learn more by focusing intensely on these issues than I would by doing something completely separate. These issues touch on questions of history, civics, political philosophy, media, government, and of course technology.”

In December, Facebook launched new features to prevent harassment, giving users the ability to filter unwanted conversations on Messenger without having to block users, and leave unsolicited conversations as unread.

It also announced new methods to identify fake accounts more quickly.

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