Mark Zuckerberg wants to develop connections between people of the world / Albert Gea / Reuters

Speaking at the F8 developer conference in San Francisco, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called for openness in the internet community, criticising those who favour isolationism and restrictions on the world wide web, the Financial Times (FT) reports. He also presented his company's 10-year plan to develop means of human connection, artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

"We are one global community in every situation, whether it is welcoming a refugee fleeing war or an immigrant seeking new opportunities. We are solving problems like the Ebola epidemic or unwanted climate change together," the newspaper quotes Zuckerberg as saying. According to the head of Facebook, the community should develop existing connections, not limit them, and "hope should be stronger than fear." Zuckerberg's statements against isolationism against the backdrop of the election debates could be perceived as criticism of US presidential candidate Donald Trump, the FT believes.

With a goal of bringing internet access to the billions of people who still don’t have it, Zuckerberg increasingly spends his time meeting with world leaders like Indian Prime Minister Narundra Modi. In the U.S., Zuckerberg is lobbying hard to loosen immigration laws to make it easier for both highly skilled people and those with lesser skills to enter the country, including those who have lived in the U.S. for years as illegal immigrants.

On the way to a billion

900 million people is the monthly audience of its Messenger mobile messaging app, according to Facebook.

As one of the tools for establishing global connections, Facebook is developing its communications platform Facebook Messenger. Facebook is currently partnering with dozens of companies, transforming Messenger into a universal tool for online shopping, news aggregation and entertainment. In addition, the company acquired the mobile messenger WhatsApp in 2014 for $22 billion, which is now used by more than a billion people.

Facebook Messenger is a major topic at F8 for the second year in a row. Last year, Facebook introduced Messenger for Business, which allows companies to communicate with customers without traditional means like email. However, only a handful of companies have adopted the tool in the past year, including e-commerce companies Zulily and Everlane, as well as Uber and KLM.

At the current conference, Facebook showed developers how to create so-called chatbots for Messenger, which use artificial intelligence to automatically communicate with customers, writes The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). David Marcus, vice president of Messenger, demonstrated buying shoes using the app. The chatbot places an order in a store, asking the buyer a series of questions about style, price, etc.

Chatbots in Messenger are already used by almost three dozen companies. Zuckerberg believes that messengers will be the main business area of Facebook in the next five years. “These technologies will be the next hit in the field of confidential communications,” the WSJ quotes the founder of Facebook. Messenger and WhatsApp are currently the most popular messengers in the world.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg speaks out against internet restrictions