Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday that Facebook should be regulated like companies in other areas of the media.
Zuckerberg spoke to CNN about the controversy surrounding Facebook's impact on the 2016 election, and Zuckerberg said he cannot fully assess what that impact was. He said the overall picture of the election makes it hard to assess, leading CNN’s Laurie Segall to ask whether Facebook needs to be regulated.
"Given the stakes here, why shouldn't Facebook be regulated?" Segall asked.
"I actually am not sure we shouldn't be regulated," Zuckerberg replied. "I think in general, technology is an increasingly important trend in the world, and I actually think the question is more, ‘What is the right regulation?’ rather than, ‘Yes or no, should it be regulated?’"
Segall asked what kind of regulations there should be, and Zuckerberg specifically said advertisements on the internet ought to be transparent.
"There are things, like ads transparency regulation, that I would love to see," he said. "If you look at how much regulation there is around advertising on TV, in print, it's just not clear why there should be less on the internet. You should have the same level of transparency required."
"I don't know if a bill is going to pass," he added. "I know a couple of senators are working really hard on this, but we're committed and we've actually already started rolling out ad transparency tools that accomplish most of the things that are in the bills that people are talking about today. We think this is an important thing."
Zuckerberg said Facebook users should be able to know where ads come from and what other content an advertiser is sending to other users.
"People should know who is buying the ads they see on Facebook, and you should be able to go to any page and see all the ads people are running to different audiences," he said.