In every TV studio where Facebook’s powerful position is being debated, one chair remains empty. In every newspaper article, every blogpost and every Facebook thread that challenges the company, one participant is missing.

Where is Mark Zuckerberg? A man now more powerful than most state leaders.

When I wrote an open letter to Zuckerberg earlier this month, I had three objectives.

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First and foremost, Aftenposten wanted to stop Facebook’s censorship of the documentary photo The Terror of War. We did – but our victory was only symbolic. It just made Facebook see what everybody else is seeing: this picture is a documentation of the horrors of war – not nudity.

My second objective was to encourage debate on Facebook’s ever more powerful role as the world’s most important distributor of news and content. We succeeded in this as well, and I am pleased to see that the debate was international.

Most conspicuous, however, is the deafening silence from Facebook. Yes, they distribute written statements, which are dutifully read out by news anchors at the end of reports, but real participation is more the exception than the rule. Here in Scandinavia, Facebook has even gone so far as to leave it to a Swedish PR company to answer inquiries from the media. This company in turn will tell the press to quote “a spokesperson for Facebook”.

This brings me to my third and most important objective – to make Mark Zuckerberg personally engage in this issue. Here I have failed completely so far.

The silence is not surprising. Facebook does not want to be conceived as a media company, only as a technology platform. It is a matter of appearances. Facebook may not be a media company, but on the other hand it is not just a neutral platform, as the censoring of The Terror of War clearly shows.

To an increasing number of people, Facebook is tantamount to the internet. More than 1 billion people use it every day. To the extent that those billion visit other websites, they often do so via a link from Facebook. Even if not all media companies publish directly on Facebook, this is where their users share, engage with the content, and discuss it. This makes Facebook, if not a media company, then definitely a gatekeeper for all media companies in the world.

An increasing part of the population states that Facebook is their main deliverer of information about what is going on in the world. Zuckerberg is de facto the most powerful editor-in-chief on the globe. His influence is greater than all the Rupert Murdochs of this world could dream about.

Zuckerberg mainly exerts his editorial responsibility by means of advanced algorithms that control what information we get to see and what we don’t. Algorithms can be a smart, efficient and reliable way to order content, but they may also carry more troubling effects. Algorithms that primarily make sure users are being fed more of what they like – and less of what they don’t like – are convenient when you are watching Netflix but are a questionable principle for the free flow of information in a democracy.

Of course the algorithms, a set of rules made by humans, do not have to work this way. This is a choice ultimately sanctioned by the editor – Zuckerberg.

Such algorithms may create so-called filter bubbles, which reinforce a negative trend of our time – the one that leads to more polarized communities. More and more people live in bubbles where they only get the information they want and communicate only with like-minded people.

Access to verified facts, news and others’ opinions is important to everybody. Facebook could help facilitate this but in practice it often has the opposite effect.

The algorithm that decides what content you will be offered, the rules for what is permitted, and the way Facebook handles criticism – all of this affects the public debate on which our democracies are resting.

Zuckerberg and his staff deserve their success. But with size comes power, and with power comes responsibility

Norway’s prime minister, Erna Solberg, who was censored after she published The Terror of War, received a letter of thanks from Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg. The writer who started it all, Tom Egeland, never heard a word, but he was quietly readmitted. Espen Goffeng, who is not a public figure, was excluded from Facebook, with the additional information that the decision was “permanent”. The exclusion was retracted after Aftenposten wrote about the matter.

Facebook is a fantastic product for all of us. It is enriching the lives of millions, including my own. And in many ways, the world has become a better place because of Facebook. Zuckerberg and his staff deserve their success. But with size comes power, and with power comes responsibility.

We have now arrived at the point where Facebook, by controlling what they show to more than 1 billion people every day, has aggregated so much editorial power, that Zuckerberg must acknowledge his responsibility and take part in the discussion. The alternative, a continued passive approach to this debate, will be bad for democracy, bad for the conversations our communities rest on, and maybe even bad for Facebook themselves in the long term.

Facebook has become a Frenemy of the People. As a democratic society we must expect that the company will take an active part in the debate about its own role. But it will only start when the man at the top wants it.