Inside Zuck's brain as he enters his oh f*** it phase
Billionaire scion or social menace? Even he can't decide, but Zuck's telling the world that he's done with apologising...
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I’m taking a brief hiatus from the antitrust trial today as the DoJ and Google’s defence are locked in technical bickering, but I’ll be back for the defence opening next week.
In the meantime, let’s switch focus to Mark Zuckerberg as I’ve been on a journey into his head. There’s a lot that goes on in there, but he’s just made a pivot…
There are few more polarising people. Zuckerberg. Aged 40. Social scion, billionaire genius, and AGI visionary ?
Or cynical publisher killer , metaverse madman, child torture enabler , and surveillance capitalist ?
The dorky geek who emerged from a college dorm room 20 years ago now controls a narrative that sets the mood for three billion people daily and sculpts global policy.
Understanding him is no easy task, even to those who work most closely with him, but I’m going to have a go, because I fear he’s about to emerge in a new, tougher guise.
Rather than guess (I don’t have him on speed dial btw) I will let him share his world view in his own words, supported by some narrative from those who worked with him.
He doesn’t do many interviews, so it’s interesting that he chose to emerge from the shadows ahead of the US election for this live interview with the Acquired podcast .
His tone was notably different. He told a packed house he was done apologising as experience had hardened his views on leadership, politics, and products.
Meta’s been on a rollercoaster. Embroiled in Russian election interference , the scandal of Cambridge Analytica , the surveillance, bullying and deaths of children…
Yet it has never been regulated.
It’s shown the finger to the Australian government and Canadian governments over copyright and privacy and now’s doing the same in the UK.
Any publisher that did the same would be pilloried, its editors jailed, and its titles shut down.
Meta has been left to keep growing its reach, wealth, and influence. With 3.2 billion users, it’s showing its fastest growth ever .
On stage, Zuck wore a self-designed T-shirt. It bore Greek lettering which read: Learning through suffering.
When co-host Ben Gilbert asked him: “Of all the criticisms that have happened over the years, which do you believe is the most legitimate? And why?” it opened the floodgates.
Casey Newton reported in Platformer : “Zuckerberg took the opportunity to discuss his shifting calculus around the value of an apology.
“He had expected that publicly accepting responsibility for problems would allow the company to move on.
“Instead, he said, it led to critics demanding that he and Meta take responsibility for even more problems.”?
This is what Zuck said:
“I don't want to simplify this too much, and there are a lot of things that we did wrong.
“One of the things I look back on and regret is we accepted other people’s view of things we were doing wrong, or were responsible for, that I don’t think we were.
“There were things we did mess up and needed to fix, but there’s a view when you’re a company and someone says there’s an issue, the right instinct is to take ownership.
“Maybe it’s not all our thing, but we’re going to fully own this problem. We’re going to take responsibility. We’re going to fix it.
“Sometimes people are operating in good faith, identifying a problem and want something fixed, and there are people just looking for someone to blame.
“…people blaming social media and the tech industry for all these things in society.
“There were a bunch of people who just took that and were like: ‘Oh, you’re taking responsibility for that? Let me kick you for more stuff.’
“Honestly, I think we should have been firmer, and clearer, about which things we actually felt like we had a part in, and which ones we didn’t.
“I think that the political miscalculation was a 20-year mistake. We found our footing on what the principles are, and where we think we need to improve.
“But where people make allegations about the impact of the tech industry or our company which are just not founded in any fact, I think we should push back harder.
“It’s going to take another 10 years for us to fully work through the cycle before our brand is back to the place it maybe could have been if I hadn’t messed that up.”
This was Platformer ’s take. “What he believes is unfair, I think, is the suggestion that Meta is primarily responsible for our polarised politics, the decline of democracy, or the dire state of mental health among young people in the United States.
“What led Zuckerberg to lose faith in the value of contrition? Here’s a guess: Ultimately, it bought him very little, at least in the court of public opinion.
“Meta seems equally disliked in red and blue states. This week, 42 Attorneys General endorsed a plan to force Zuckerberg to add warning labels to his products saying that they put children at risk.
“Why apologise, you can imagine him and his lieutenants asking one another, when it gets you nowhere?”
Friend of Future Media Katie Harbath co-ordinated the global teams that oversaw Meta’s election coverage for a decade, and worked closely with Zuck.
I asked her if she thought his comments were ominous.
She told me:
“I didn’t read it as ominous, but rather Mark saying the quiet part out loud.
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“He’s been in this mode since 2020. He’s right that Facebook has been blamed for some things that aren’t the company’s fault.
“At the same time there were definitely things we needed to do better on, and I’m proud of some of the stuff we built post-2016 and the leadership role we took in doing them - like ads transparency.
“I can’t help but take some of his comments personally because he’s basically saying my entire 10 years was a mistake. I don’t think that’s true.
“Do I think we could have handled it better, yes, but I also feel as though Elon Musk has given him cover to act like this, and once again Mark can’t find balance on all this.
“He constantly swings between extremes.
“Why do you think it’s ominous?”
I responded: “I felt?for you when I read it too, but what I saw was Zuck beginning to question why he should try to be better when people?still?criticise him.
“That’s a path?towards authoritarian?thinking to me, and I agree with you?on Musk. He’s the posterchild for the tech libertarian ‘just f*** it’ generation. who roll out ever-faster tech, ignore regulation, and say that if anyone complains, it’s war.
“I’ve been predicting for a year that a Big Tech leader will push the envelope too far and end up in jail . My bet’s been on Musk recently, but now it’s back on Zuck.
“Prosecuting him for harming kids is easy to prove, will win over juries, and also be wildly politically popular with voters and both sides of politics.”
Karie replied: “Mark swings between extremes. He prefers to work in ones and zeros, where things are clear versus the ambiguity that politics brings, and he wants immediate results.
“The end goal? He just wants to be left alone to make things.
“He and the company react to whatever pain they are experiencing in the moment and struggle to look at how things might play out long term.
“He also cannot just be quiet. If he doesn’t want to get pulled into politics, then stop doing Press talking about it. That’s what companies like Google have figured out.
“All that said, Meta’s remains one of the companies putting the greatest resources into protecting the integrity of elections even if they don’t talk about it as much.
“I don’t think Mark was saying they didn’t have any responsibility, just that they shouldn’t be the only ones under scrutiny.
“Regardless, none of those efforts will be what they are remembered for. This election it will be that they tried to run from politics but couldn’t hide.”
I replied: “The ones and zeros is fascinating. I wrote about it way back in 2016: How Facebook can find its place as a network for social good .”
Katie then wrote this in her excellent Substack newsletter Anchor Change :
Like many platform CEOs, Mark Zuckerberg leaned into politics when things were favourable during the Obama era . It wasn’t just seen as cool; being the go-to place for political conversation was essential for relevance.
After 2016, the narrative shifted to responsibility, but that came with scandal after scandal over the next five years.
Despite pouring in resources, Zuckerberg felt he wasn’t getting credit for his efforts. Now, he’s trying to distance himself - and Facebook - from politics altogether.
What’s the common thread here? Zuckerberg was either caught up in or reacting to the moment, doing what he thought would make people like him or stop criticizing him.
We’ve watched him evolve from a 20-year-old to a 40-year-old CEO, still trying to define himself as a leader.
Unlike most of his fellow platform founders who have moved on, he’s stayed in the CEO role, but now he’s on an island - haunted by hindsight , as Charlie Warzel put it. You can trace this in his responses to the crises that have unfolded.
Warzel’s right: This is a game Zuckerberg can’t win. These recent comments may signal that realization - but I’m not convinced.
There was a time when I thought I knew Zuckerberg’s values, and I respected him for not caving to pressure from either side.
He’d host an all-hands meeting or write a manifesto, and the company would rally around his vision - until a new one emerged.
But now, after so many pivots, we’ve lost the plot. I wish he’d go back to basics and remind us all of his core values - the things Facebook should do simply because they’re the right things to do. Then he should act on them.
Instead, it feels like he’s complaining - wanting to have an impact without the messiness that comes with it.
Sure, he’s been unfairly blamed for some things, but maybe instead of seeking approval, he should just put his head down and get to work.
This is another example of Zuckerberg’s tendency to swing between extremes. He prefers clear-cut problems over the ambiguity that politics brings, and he craves immediate results.
Ultimately, he wants to be left alone to build things, and instead, he and the company have to spend time reacting to whatever crisis is at hand. Unfortunately, this is what comes with having an impactful platform.
But this isn’t just a Mark Zuckerberg problem - it’s an issue across platforms.
Companies that publicly engage get pulled into crisis after crisis, so some, like Google and Apple, choose not to engage at all. It’s the safest option - but is it the best one?
We all get swept up in these crises, reacting to every statement and forgetting that platforms like Meta still invest heavily in trust, safety, and protecting election integrity, even if they don’t always publicize it.
While I’m frustrated with Zuckerberg’s recent decisions, I don’t think he’s shirking responsibility - he’s just saying Meta shouldn’t be the only one under scrutiny.
That’s fair but complaining about being treated unfairly won’t win anyone over.
In this election cycle, Meta won’t be remembered for its efforts - it’ll be remembered for trying to run from politics but failing to hide.
Powerful stuff directly from a Meta insider who has been there in the throne room with Zuck himself at pivotal moments in the company’s history.
Next, starting tomorrow, and for the next five weeks, I will begin republishing Zuck’s own manifesto for Meta.
In 2017, he shared an internal 6,000-word six-chapter vision with his staff. It was his North Star, created amid the fallout after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
It was a rare gaze into his brain, and revealed his views on community, media, globalisation, poverty, climate, family, and the power of digital to build or break human bonds.
It’s interesting stuff. Starts tomorrow.