Mark Zuckerberg on Apple: 'Encryption should not be blocked'

BARCELONA -- Mark Zuckerberg is on Apple's side, but we're still not sure what he'd do if the FBI asked him to help break into a customer's encrypted phone. 

The Facebook CEO and founder gave his thoughts on a variety of topics in a keynote conversation on Monday, closing up the first day of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. 

Plagued by horrible sound problems during the entire keynote, Zuckerberg felt visibly uncomfortable on stage, even commenting about his sweating multiple times (“I can’t control that,” he said). But he braved it through, delivering a clear message on the myriad of ways in which he’s trying to make the world a better place.

“It’s crazy that we’re sitting here in 2016, and 4 billion people don’t have internet access,” he said, commenting on Facebook’s Internet.org initiative. He acknowledged that the ruling against it in India was a major setback, but he’s not deterred from the goal to bring Internet to as many people as possible. In India, it won’t be through Internet.org's Free Basics, but the company will focus on “different programs,” he said.

“I hope we finish the job of getting everyone in the world — not just the rich people — Internet access.”

Zuckerberg also expressed some disappointment at the direction in which the development of mobile Internet is heading. “4G was about connecting people, but 5G is about connecting things,” he said. “I hope we finish the job of getting everyone in the world — not just the rich people — Internet access.”

With Zuckerberg’s Sunday appearance at the Samsung press conference being focused almost solely on virtual reality, that was an obvious topic for this keynote as well. The way he sees it, we first had text, then photos, and then video, and VR — “the ability to share whole scenes” — is what’s coming next.

Virtual reality and video are two huge focuses for Facebook right now. Acknowledging the company “blew it twice” when it comes to mobile, Zuckerberg said he hopes it gets video right the first time.

He gave an interesting comment on artificial intelligence, claiming that people who actually work on AI are not afraid of it. Hidden jab at Elon Musk? Could be. In any case, Zuck is pretty big on AI as well, claiming it’s much better than humans at pattern recognition. “Self-driving cars will save a lot of people’s lives.”

One area in which Zuckerberg was a little less clear was the question on his stance about FBI’s request for Apple to help decrypt an iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. “I’m sympathetic with Apple,” said Zuckerberg, and “encryption should not be blocked. But we have a big responsibility to prevent terrorism, and we want to help the governments prevent terrorism.”

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