Mark Zuckerberg’s vision is in conflict with Facebook’s mission
Notes on Mark Zuckerberg’s interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein
In an interview on Monday with fellow internet wunderkind (and maddeningly accomplished and well-spoken and friendly) Ezra Klein, Facebook’s world-historical founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg asks in that robotically earnest way of his a rhetorical question that connects to an idea he’s been pushing for a while now. “How,” he asks, “can you set up a more democratic or community-oriented process that reflects the values of people around the world?”
He’s talking about Facebook, of course, which, as Klein notes, Zuckerberg has already said functions more like a government than a traditional company. And it’s clear that he thinks building community and introducing democratic processes into the model is among the best solutions to the problems — privacy violations, data harvesting by third party developers, fake news, hate speech — that have plagued the platform since its founding.
In fact Zuckerberg’s vision is grander, even, than solving these problems. According to that Maoist-style manifesto he wrote in February 2017, Zuckerberg believes Facebook can “develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us.”
