PARIS: Facebook users to get good safeguards, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday that he was rolling out the privacy controls demanded by European regulators to Facebook users worldwide because “everyone cares about privacy”.
Speaking at the VivaTech trade fair in Paris a day before new European data protection rules come into force Zuckerberg said Europe’s history had made its citizens particularly wary when it comes to data collection.
“There are specific points about history in Europe. If you’re a German citizen and you grew up here you’re worried about the Stasi (former East German secret police).
“That’s more recent in your memory than what we have in the US or other folks around the world.” But “everyone cares about privacy.
That’s not only here, that’s a global thing,” Zuckerberg said, confirming he would extend the protections demanded by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation – including on facial recognition – to Facebook’s two billion users worldwide.
“We’ve been very clear that we’ll roll out the same controls all around the world,” he said, adding that “good regulation” would increase user trust in how tech giants use their data.
Relevant piece published earlier: The dreaded Islamic State militant group has made death threats to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a new video which shows their photos riddled with digitally added bullet holes, mocking the social media websites’ attempts to block terrorist content from their platforms. In the 25-minute video, the IS claim they are fighting back against efforts by the social media giants to wipe their platforms of accounts promoting terrorism. The video includes a direct threat to the tech entrepreneurs, branding them allies of the American “Crusader government”. Pictures of Zuckerberg and Dorsey can be seen being blasted with a hail of bullets in the amateur footage which emerged. In a separate slide, they also claim to have hacked more than 10,000 Facebook accounts, 150 Facebook groups, and more than 5,000 Twitter accounts.