Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg leaves the Elysee Palace after his Friday meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron in Paris. Zuckerberg met with Macron as the tech giant and France try to pioneer ways of fighting hate speech and violent extremism online.

PARIS — France welcomed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Paris on Friday with the threat of sweeping new regulations against his social media behemoth — and Zuckerberg himself called that proposal a good thing.

With his company under fire on multiple fronts, Zuckerberg came to France to show that Facebook is working hard to limit violent extremism and hate speech shared online.

But a group of French regulators and experts who spent weeks inside Facebook facilities in Paris, Dublin and Barcelona as part of a pilot cooperation project say the company still isn’t working hard enough on that front and governments need to step in.

Zuckerberg’s visit came amid concerns about hate speech and disinformation around this month’s May 23-26 European Parliament elections, which are taking place in all of the European Union’s 28 nations.

Just before Zuckerberg met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, the 10 officials released a report calling for laws allowing the French government to investigate and fine social networks that don’t take responsibility for the content that makes them money.

The regulators recommended legally requiring a “duty of care” for big social networks, meaning they should moderate hate speech published on their platforms. The regulators say any new law should respect freedom of expression, but did not explain how Facebook should balance those responsibilities in practice.

To an average user, the problem seems intractable. Mass shootings are being live-streamed and online mobs are spreading rumors that lead to deadly violence. Facebook is even inadvertently creating celebratory videos using extremist content and auto-generating business pages for the likes of Islamic State militants and al-Qaida.

The French government wants the legislation to serve as a model for a Europe-wide management of social networks — and Zuckerberg does, too.

“We can make progress on enforcing the rules, but at some level the question of what speech should be acceptable and what is harmful needs to be defined by regulation, by thoughtful governments that have a robust democratic process,” Zuckerberg told reporters after meeting with Macron at the Elysee presidential palace.

The ideas about better regulation stemmed from a pilot project between Facebook and France, and Zuckerberg said he’s “encouraged and optimistic” about the result.

He said France’s proposals are preferable to the mass control in authoritarian countries.