F*ck Z*ck:
Different Face, Same Book.
“They ‘trust me.’ Dumb fucks.”
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg
Since the mid 2000s, Facebook has been the headlining name in scandals ranging from cyber security breaches, to rigging elections, to teenage suicide. Still, the tech company has steadily expanded since its creation in 2004. Facebook has become the prettiest and most popular girl in Silicon Valley, slowly monopolizing the big tech industry by buying out companies like Instagram, and most recently, rebranding as Meta in 2021. Siva Vaidhyanathan writes in his book Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects US and Undermines Democracy, “Facebook is the paradigmatic distillation of the Silicon Valley ideology. No company better represents the dream of a fully connected planet ‘sharing’ words, ideas, images, and plans. No company has better leveraged those ideas into wealth and influence. No company has contributed more to the paradoxical collapse of basic tenets of deliberation and democracy” (Vaidhyanathan 4). Facebook’s notorious founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has built an empire on bypassing ethical concerns for the sake of financial gain.
As more research is done on the negative impacts of social media and more security scandals are being uncovered, it seems as though Zuckerberg is running away from the controversy at full tilt by slapping a shiny new brand name and logo on the same worn-out story. Zuckerberg’s promise of a new avenue of interconnectedness and global idea sharing through Meta sounds all too familiar — he made many of these same promises about Facebook when it first came out. The front page of the Meta website proudly states “Connection is evolving and so are we” (Meta). Zuckerberg’s business model of manipulation and lack of transparency, however, has not evolved. Rebranding as Meta will not erase Mark Zuckerberg’s negative contributions to the modern digital landscape. Zuckerberg has only learned one thing from the toxicity he perpetuated through Facebook: that he can get away with it.
Since Facebook’s creation, Zuckerberg has expanded it into a multi-billion dollar company with nearly 3 billion global users. Facebook set the precedent for social network companies across the globe, and heavily shaped the Silicon Valley tech scene that is so influential today. This is what makes Zuckerberg’s influence so important; his reach is worldwide, and he has his tentacles in every dark corner of the internet. Zuckerberg’s empire affects all of us, whether we acknowledge it or not.
One business decision that Zuckerberg has opted to keep the same in his transition from Facebook to Meta is the branding rhetoric he uses to talk about the companies. In a research article titled “Making the world more open and connected”: Mark Zuckerberg and the discursive construction of Facebook and its users, researchers analyzed the language Zuckerberg and his team used to describe Facebook from its founding on. The study found the following trends in Facebook’s marketing rhetoric:
“As Facebook evolved from a small, interactive college directory to a global social network, it has claimed three discernible phases in Zuckerberg’s language: (1) a useful directory for quickly finding information about people, (2) a social network connecting and enabling the sharing of information between people, and (3) a critical social infrastructure for the Web and, increasingly, the world. Alongside these shifts in Facebook’s self-conception, the imagined Facebook user in Mark Zuckerberg’s discourse has also shifted. Zuckerberg’s discursive construction of the user offers insight into who Facebook is — and implicitly is not — for and how it fits into users’ lives.” (Hoffmann, Proferes, Zimmer).
Zuckerberg has shifted his goals for Facebook from what they were when he conceptualized the idea at Harvard to what they are now at Meta. He went from being an arrogant twenty-something college student to a carefully-calculated leader of an empire. Resources like The Zuckerberg Files capture this shift through archives of every public statement Zuckerberg has made about issues such as privacy, data sharing, and transparency in his company. The patterns in his words have been tracked, documented and analyzed. Zuckerberg paints his social network as a neutral platform that inspires connection and creativity. The hostility in the comments section of any major Facebook post contradicts this statement. Zuckerberg claims to have created a space where anyone from around the world can belong and thrive. The countless white supremacy Facebook groups that exist today say otherwise. Zuckerberg’s branding rhetoric consistently contradicts the reality of his products. Why, then, should we believe Meta will be any different?
An investor formerly associated with Facebook, Roger McNamee, said about the company, “I believe the advertising business model creates the wrong incentive for Facebook. It forces them to use highly addictive technology and basically push people to increasingly extreme positions. So polarization is good for their business. Anger and fear are good for their business” (Chang 220–221). Zuckerberg and his team have the capabilities to make their products healthier and safer for the general public to use, but doing so would be a monetary disadvantage for the company. Instead, Zuckerberg opts to profit off of manipulation of the human psyche. If Zuckerberg could do this through Facebook, a two-dimensional network, imagine what he could do with a four-dimensional, interactive VR experience such as the Metaverse. Financially speaking, Zuckerberg has a lot to gain from carrying out his tactics in a VR setting. In 2022 alone, the market for AR/VR equipment is estimated to increase by nearly 50%. By 2025, the number of units shipped is expected to triple (Liebert). If the Metaverse is even half as addictive as Facebook, Zuckerberg would be sitting on quite a lot of money, especially considering he is on track to invest $10 billion in AR and VR research through Facebook Reality Labs (Liebert).
As more generations are growing up in the digital world, many people have accepted that the metaverse will be an integral part of daily life in the future (Liebert). Whether or not virtual reality becomes our everyday reality, it does not have to operate on the premises Zuckerberg first implemented with Facebook. The digital landscape can change with proper policy and an emphasis on making ethics in technology a priority. Voting for elected officials that will back anti-monopoly laws, advocating for increased digital literacy and choice, and consistently holding Zuckerberg accountable for the damage he has caused globally are steps that we can take to change the narrative of ethics in tech. The current infrastructure is not working for the public, because it was not designed to work for the public. As the users of social networks, we have the power to communicate a need for ethical practices among companies like Meta. Under the current laws and lack of regulation for tech giants, we are snowballing towards an even more immersive, all-consuming version of Facebook. We can’t trust Zuckerberg to make the metaverse a safe place. Zuckerberg admitted this himself before VR as we know it today was even conceptualized, while sitting at his desk at Harvard in 2004 and writing instant messages to a friend. Now, nearly two decades later, we are just breaching the surface of putting structures in place to prevent monopolies like Meta in the future. We are learning about the need for stricter regulations on digital spaces largely thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, due to the damage that his products have inflicted on our global society. Today, the walls are closing in on his business model. Despite his rebrand, the ghosts of his arrogant, selfish choices are coming back to haunt him. He can no longer trust the user to blindly comply with his unethical practices. Dumb Zuck.
Chang, Emily. Brotopia : Breaking up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley. Portfolio/Penguin, 2018.
“Facebook: Toxic Smear Campaign.” Week (London, England : 1995), no. 1203, London: Dennis Publishing Ltd, pp. 51–51.
Hoffmann, Anna Lauren ; Proferes, Nicholas ; Zimmer, Michael. “‘Making the World More Open and Connected’: Mark Zuckerberg and the Discursive Construction of Facebook and Its Users.” New Media & Society, vol. 20, no. 1, London, England: SAGE Publications, pp. 199–218, doi:10.1177/1461444816660784.
Wiederhold, Brenda K. “Ready (or Not) Player One: Initial Musings on the Metaverse.” Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, vol. 25, no. 1, United States: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers, pp. 1–2, doi:10.1089/cyber.2021.29234.editorial.
Vaidhyanathan, Siva. “Introduction: The Problem With Facebook Is Facebook.” Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects US and Undermines Democracy, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2021.
Vargas, Jose Antonio, et al. “The Face of Facebook.” The New Yorker, 13 Sept. 2010, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/20/the-face-of-facebook.
