Zuckerberg worried about China’s ‘dangerous’ approach to regulate internet; suggests step to counter

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg raising concern over China’s way to regulate internet services said that he is worried about how other countries are trying to imitate that model which is “really dangerous”. Talking to European Union Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton recently, as cited by CNBC, Zuckerberg said that “there is a model coming out of countries like China that tend to have very different values than Western countries that are more democratic.” According to the 2019 Freedom on the Net report by the US-based democracy and human rights monitor Freedom House, the Chinese government has been the world’s worst abuser of the internet for the fourth consecutive year.

Urging Western nations to counter this approach by China, Zuckerberg called for a ‘democratic alternative’. He suggested, “having a clear framework that comes out of Western democratic countries and that can become a standard around the world.” Even with respect to the news around Coronavirus, the country started censoring online discussions as early as December 31 — weeks before it acknowledged the scope of the disease, PTI cited a report by the researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.