Facebook attaches importance to Turkey’s national interests - senior official

Facebook attaches importance to the national interests of Turkey, a country in which it operates, a senior director at the social media giant said Thursday.

"We attach importance to [our] users' safety and freedom of expression, human rights and the national interests of the country [where we operate]," Azzam Alameddin, the company's director of the public policy covering the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, told members of the Turkish parliament's digital media committee.

Alameddin noted that the company was always trying to strike a balance between security and freedom.

In principle, Facebook is constructive and always open to negotiations with the public and the authorities, Alameddin said.

"It is very important to have constructive talks with the public," he said.

Facebook renamed itself Meta on Oct. 28, which will unite Facebook's apps and technologies including WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and its Oculus virtual reality division.

The technology is a step forward in co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's ambitions for the metaverse, in which interconnected virtual experiences use technologies like virtual and augmented reality.

Alameddin said that Meta was not "a transnational thing."

"It is not possible for us to consider ourselves superior to you," he added.

Facebook announced on Oct. 17 that it is planning to create 10,000 new highly skilled jobs in the European Union over the next five years to build the metaverse.