Facebook Leaders Call It a Tech Company, Not Media Company

By DEEPA SEETHARAMAN for the Wall Street Journal.

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif.— Facebook Inc. continued to resist the label of media company, but is getting even more heavily involved in content.

The social network is building new tools to make videos more compelling, including new filters that will make live videos look more painterly, said Chris Cox, Facebook’s chief product officer, at the WSJDLive conference in Laguna Beach, Calif. Those filters reinterpret a live video in the style of painters like Monet or Rembrandt.

“We’re making the camera a really nice creative tool and that’s the kind of thing we’re very invested in right now,” Mr. Cox said during a panel with Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, on Tuesday. It is unclear when those filters, which are still in the prototype phase, will be available to all users.

Video will be 70% of all traffic to sites like Facebook’s mobile traffic by 2021, Mr. Cox added.

Mr. Cox and Ms. Sandberg—two of the longest tenured executives at the 12-year-old social media company—also reiterated that Facebook is a technology company focused on building tools, not a media company focused on making stories.

But as it has grown, Facebook has found itself grappling with the some of the very issues faced by news organizations for decades. That tension has been highlighted over the last year by several controversial content decisions made by Facebook.

In September, the company drew rebuke when its reviewers deleted posts containing a famous Vietnam War photo of a girl fleeing napalm bombs. Facebook later reversed the decision after intense criticism from Norway’s prime minister and the nation’s largest newspaper, saying it would allow the image due to its “history and global importance.”

Last December, top Facebook executives agreed to preserve some of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s posts, even though two posts calling for a ban on Muslims from entering the U.S. violated the site’s rules for hate speech, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.

Ms. Sandberg said Facebook has twin goals: to be a platform for all ideas and to create a safe community.

“Those two things can come into conflict because one person’s free expression can be another person’s hate,” Ms. Sandberg said. “You can see with lots of these decisions—we’re balancing these things.”

Last week, Facebook said it would relax its strict rules around what users can post to allow more newsworthy content, even if it pushes the limits of what the site allows. Facebook has had rules in place for years banning discrimination toward people based on their race and religion.

“I think the really big question is how do we make sure that people have free expression on Facebook,” said Ms. Sandberg. She added that the company is evolving as a service and trying to “really figure” out where to draw the line on content. Facebook said it would seek input from publishers, journalists, photographers, law-enforcement officials and safety advocates as it allows more newsworthy content.

The site doesn’t want to give users a platform to commit violence, Ms. Sandberg said, pointing out that Facebook cooperates with law enforcement. Facebook typically removes content that violates the rules.

Live video, an area in which Facebook is investing heavily, is a new challenge to its standards. Facebook Live, which launched globally in April, allows users to broadcast their lives with a tap of a button. To ensure a steady flow of live videos after launch, Facebook agreed to pay millions of dollars to at least 140 major publishers, celebrities, athletes and public figures to produce live broadcasts.

Now, Facebook is looking to drum up enthusiasm for live video among ordinary people. The filters showcased Tuesday allow users to capture live video that they can proud of, Mr. Cox said.