Facebook Inc. Founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his social network has failed to "take a broad enough view" of the platform's potential to fuel fake news, interfere in elections and spread hate speech.
Nevertheless, he told an annual tech conference in Paris that Facebook plans to curb these issues going forward.
Speaking May 24 at VivaTech, Zuckerberg said that, until now, the company had largely focused on the positive influence of its platform during its 14-year history and "was not prepared" for dealing with sophisticated misinformation campaigns, particularly the alleged Russian interference during the U.S. elections.
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"For most of Facebook's existence we have focused primarily on all the good that connecting people and technology can bring," he told delegates in the French capital.
After several terrorist attacks, Facebook users used the platform's tools to tell friends and family they were safe, Zuckerberg continued, adding that more than 70 million small businesses have used his website to reach new customers and grow their companies.
Zuckerberg's appearance in France follows a May 22 roundtable discussion with members of the European Parliament, ahead of the implementation of new privacy controls known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which come into force May 25.
As European lawmakers attempt to give consumers greater control over how their personal details are used, the company faced skepticism over its ability to comply with tougher data regulation in Europe, particularly in the aftermath of Facebook's separate challenges with fake news and extremist content.
The platform is also still recovering from the backlash over a massive data privacy leak involving political data-research firm Cambridge Analytica LLC and the personal information of as many as 87 million Facebook users.
This prompted the U.K.'s parliamentary select committee for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to issue repeated invitations for Zuckerberg to give evidence in Britain, all of which were declined.
At VivaTech, Zuckerberg outlined efforts by the company, going forward, to "take more responsibility," including through an increased use of artificial intelligence.
For instance, although Facebook plans to have more than 20,000 people working on security and content review by the end of this year, he pointed out that 99% of terrorist content is flagged by the company's AI system before any user reports it.
Even as Facebook has taken steps to become more proactive, Zuckerberg admitted the company has a long way to go.
"We have a lot of work to do … it's not enough to give people more powerful tools … we need to go further to mitigate the bad," he told delegates.
Facebook has responded to concerns over its privacy policies. Last month, the company updated the terms of its data policy and vowed to make it easier for users on its social network to find and adjust their privacy controls.
At the same time, Facebook moved approximately 1.5 billion users in Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America — previously under the jurisdiction of the company's international headquarters in Dublin — to the U.S. in order to limit the number of users impacted by the EU's GDPR.
Despite this, Zuckerberg said giving users greater control was a "core" part of Facebook's values.
"Everyone needs to have control. There needs to be transparency … and accountability. We have always shared these values," he said.
While he stressed Facebook's advertising model would remain the "right business" in the face of tighter privacy controls, he did add that the company welcomed the changes to data privacy in Europe.
"One of the things that I think good regulation can do is increase public trust that these systems are working … GDPR can be a step in that direction," Zuckerberg concluded.

Mark Zuckerberg VivaTech in Paris