Mark Zuckerberg promises to fix Facebook’s social problems

Mark Zuckerberg has promised to protect Facebook from becoming a forum for fake news and inappropriate government influence this year.

Since 2009, the Facebook founder has set himself a personal challenge at the start of each year.

Read more: Facebook has ditched its “disputed” flag for fake news. Here’s why

And today, he said his next task was to prevent the abuse of Facebook’s social network.

Posting on his Facebook account, Zuckerberg said: “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.

“My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues.”

Zuckerberg also acknowledged in his statement that the public was losing trust in large technology companies, saying that the rise of a small number of tech firms made people suspicious that they were too powerful.

Google, Twitter and Facebook will all be grilled by MPs next year as parliamentarians put pressure on tech companies to stop the spread of disinformation in the form of fake news.