Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said on March 21 that he’s open to having his company be regulated.
“Actually, I’m not sure we shouldn’t be regulated,” Zuckerberg said in an interview with CNN that represented some of his first public remarks since the Cambridge Analytica controversy plunged his company into crisis and led to calls for his testimony to Congress.
“I actually think the question is more ‘what is the right regulation?’ rather than ‘yes or no, should it be regulated?’” Zuckerberg told CNN.
The Facebook CEO said that “he would love to see” new transparency regulations for political advertisements. Facebook has been criticized for a lack of transparency.
“If you look at how much regulation there is around advertising on TV, in print, you know, it’s just not clear why there should be less on the internet,” he said.
Facebook and other tech firms have resisted legislative efforts in Congress to impose new regulations.
Late year, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mark Warner (D-VA) introduced the Honest Ads Act, legislation that would hold internet platforms like Facebook to the same political ad disclosure standards as TV, radio, and print political advertisements.
The bill has yet to gain traction in Congress. Even though Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has backed the bill, few Republicans have been willing to follow suit and publicly jump on board.
Facebook has faced intense scrutiny from critics, including lawmakers on Capitol Hill, since it revealed that the British research firm Cambridge Analytica improperly took data from 50 million Facebook users without permission.
The company had previously been scrutinized for how Russian groups used its platform to attempt to influence the 2016 election.
