speech of mark zuckerberg

Featured Topics

Featured series.

A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.

Explore the Gazette

Read the latest.

Portrait of incoming Harvard Alumni Association President Moitri Savard.

New HAA president brings holistic approach to alumni leadership

Shruti Kumar, Robert Clinton, and Blake Alexander Lopez.

Bridging social distance, embracing uncertainty, fighting for equity

‘I haven’t really had a proper weekend in a long time’

“I’m here to tell you finding your purpose isn’t enough. The challenge for our generation is creating a world where everyone has a sense of purpose,” said Mark Zuckerberg, who was the principal speaker at Harvard’s 366th Commencement on May 25.

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Mark Zuckerberg’s Commencement address at Harvard

President Faust, Board of Overseers, faculty, alumni, friends, proud parents, members of the ad board, and graduates of the greatest university in the world,

I’m honored to be with you today because, let’s face it, you accomplished something I never could. If I get through this speech, it’ll be the first time I actually finish something at Harvard. Class of 2017, congratulations!

I’m an unlikely speaker, not just because I dropped out, but because we’re technically in the same generation. We walked this yard less than a decade apart, studied the same ideas and slept through the same Ec10 lectures. We may have taken different paths to get here, especially if you came all the way from the Quad, but today I want to share what I’ve learned about our generation and the world we’re building together.

But first, the last couple of days have brought back a lot of good memories.

How many of you remember exactly what you were doing when you got that email telling you that you got into Harvard? I was playing Civilization and I ran downstairs, got my dad, and for some reason, his reaction was to video me opening the email. That could have been a really sad video. I swear getting into Harvard is still the thing my parents are most proud of me for.

What about your first lecture at Harvard? Mine was Computer Science 121 with the incredible Harry Lewis. I was late so I threw on a t-shirt and didn’t realize until afterwards it was inside out and backwards with my tag sticking out the front. I couldn’t figure out why no one would talk to me — except one guy, KX Jin, he just went with it. We ended up doing our problem sets together, and now he runs a big part of Facebook. And that, Class of 2017, is why you should be nice to people.

But my best memory from Harvard was meeting Priscilla. I had just launched this prank website Facemash, and the ad board wanted to “see me”. Everyone thought I was going to get kicked out. My parents came to help me pack. My friends threw me a going away party. As luck would have it, Priscilla was at that party with her friend. We met in line for the bathroom in the Pfoho Belltower, and in what must be one of the all time romantic lines, I said: “I’m going to get kicked out in three days, so we need to go on a date quickly.”

Actually, any of you graduating can use that line.

I didn’t end up getting kicked out — I did that to myself. Priscilla and I started dating. And, you know, that movie made it seem like Facemash was so important to creating Facebook. It wasn’t. But without Facemash I wouldn’t have met Priscilla, and she’s the most important person in my life, so you could say it was the most important thing I built in my time here.

We’ve all started lifelong friendships here, and some of us even families. That’s why I’m so grateful to this place. Thanks, Harvard.

Today I want to talk about purpose. But I’m not here to give you the standard commencement about finding your purpose. We’re millennials. We’ll try to do that instinctively. Instead, I’m here to tell you finding your purpose isn’t enough. The challenge for our generation is creating a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.

One of my favorite stories is when John F Kennedy visited the NASA space center, he saw a janitor carrying a broom and he walked over and asked what he was doing. The janitor responded: “Mr. President, I’m helping put a man on the moon”.

Purpose is that sense that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that we are needed, that we have something better ahead to work for. Purpose is what creates true happiness.

You’re graduating at a time when this is especially important. When our parents graduated, purpose reliably came from your job, your church, your community. But today, technology and automation are eliminating many jobs. Membership in communities is declining. Many people feel disconnected and depressed, and are trying to fill a void.

As I’ve traveled around, I’ve sat with children in juvenile detention and opioid addicts, who told me their lives could have turned out differently if they just had something to do, an after school program or somewhere to go. I’ve met factory workers who know their old jobs aren’t coming back and are trying to find their place.

To keep our society moving forward, we have a generational challenge — to not only create new jobs, but create a renewed sense of purpose.

I remember the night I launched Facebook from my little dorm in Kirkland House. I went to Noch’s with my friend KX. I remember telling him I was excited to connect the Harvard community, but one day someone would connect the whole world.

The thing is, it never even occurred to me that someone might be us. We were just college kids. We didn’t know anything about that. There were all these big technology companies with resources. I just assumed one of them would do it. But this idea was so clear to us — that all people want to connect. So we just kept moving forward, day by day.

I know a lot of you will have your own stories just like this. A change in the world that seems so clear you’re sure someone else will do it. But they won’t. You will.

But it’s not enough to have purpose yourself. You have to create a sense of purpose for others.

I found that out the hard way. You see, my hope was never to build a company, but to make an impact. And as all these people started joining us, I just assumed that’s what they cared about too, so I never explained what I hoped we’d build.

A couple years in, some big companies wanted to buy us. I didn’t want to sell. I wanted to see if we could connect more people. We were building the first News Feed, and I thought if we could just launch this, it could change how we learn about the world.

Nearly everyone else wanted to sell. Without a sense of higher purpose, this was the startup dream come true. It tore our company apart. After one tense argument, an advisor told me if I didn’t agree to sell, I would regret the decision for the rest of my life. Relationships were so frayed that within a year or so every single person on the management team was gone.

That was my hardest time leading Facebook. I believed in what we were doing, but I felt alone. And worse, it was my fault. I wondered if I was just wrong, an imposter, a 22 year-old kid who had no idea how the world worked.

Now, years later, I understand that *is* how things work with no sense of higher purpose. It’s up to us to create it so we can all keep moving forward together.

Today I want to talk about three ways to create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose: by taking on big meaningful projects together, by redefining equality so everyone has the freedom to pursue purpose, and by building community across the world.

First, let’s take on big meaningful projects.

Our generation will have to deal with tens of millions of jobs replaced by automation like self-driving cars and trucks. But we have the potential to do so much more together.

Every generation has its defining works. More than 300,000 people worked to put a man on the moon – including that janitor. Millions of volunteers immunized children around the world against polio. Millions of more people built the Hoover dam and other great projects.

These projects didn’t just provide purpose for the people doing those jobs, they gave our whole country a sense of pride that we could do great things.

Now it’s our turn to do great things. I know, you’re probably thinking: I don’t know how to build a dam, or get a million people involved in anything.

But let me tell you a secret: no one does when they begin. Ideas don’t come out fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started.

If I had to understand everything about connecting people before I began, I never would have started Facebook.

Movies and pop culture get this all wrong. The idea of a single eureka moment is a dangerous lie. It makes us feel inadequate since we haven’t had ours. It prevents people with seeds of good ideas from getting started. Oh, you know what else movies get wrong about innovation? No one writes math formulas on glass. That’s not a thing.

It’s good to be idealistic. But be prepared to be misunderstood. Anyone working on a big vision will get called crazy, even if you end up right. Anyone working on a complex problem will get blamed for not fully understanding the challenge, even though it’s impossible to know everything upfront. Anyone taking initiative will get criticized for moving too fast, because there’s always someone who wants to slow you down.

In our society, we often don’t do big things because we’re so afraid of making mistakes that we ignore all the things wrong today if we do nothing. The reality is, anything we do will have issues in the future. But that can’t keep us from starting.

So what are we waiting for? It’s time for our generation-defining public works. How about stopping climate change before we destroy the planet and getting millions of people involved manufacturing and installing solar panels? How about curing all diseases and asking volunteers to track their health data and share their genomes? Today we spend 50x more treating people who are sick than we spend finding cures so people don’t get sick in the first place. That makes no sense. We can fix this. How about modernizing democracy so everyone can vote online, and personalizing education so everyone can learn?

These achievements are within our reach. Let’s do them all in a way that gives everyone in our society a role. Let’s do big things, not only to create progress, but to create purpose.

So taking on big meaningful projects is the first thing we can do to create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.

The second is redefining equality to give everyone the freedom they need to pursue purpose.

Many of our parents had stable jobs throughout their careers. Now we’re all entrepreneurial, whether we’re starting projects or finding or role. And that’s great. Our culture of entrepreneurship is how we create so much progress.

Now, an entrepreneurial culture thrives when it’s easy to try lots of new ideas. Facebook wasn’t the first thing I built. I also built games, chat systems, study tools and music players. I’m not alone. JK Rowling got rejected 12 times before publishing Harry Potter. Even Beyonce had to make hundreds of songs to get Halo. The greatest successes come from having the freedom to fail.

But today, we have a level of wealth inequality that hurts everyone. When you don’t have the freedom to take your idea and turn it into a historic enterprise, we all lose. Right now our society is way over-indexed on rewarding success and we don’t do nearly enough to make it easy for everyone to take lots of shots.

Let’s face it. There is something wrong with our system when I can leave here and make billions of dollars in 10 years while millions of students can’t afford to pay off their loans, let alone start a business.

Look, I know a lot of entrepreneurs, and I don’t know a single person who gave up on starting a business because they might not make enough money. But I know lots of people who haven’t pursued dreams because they didn’t have a cushion to fall back on if they failed.

We all know we don’t succeed just by having a good idea or working hard. We succeed by being lucky too. If I had to support my family growing up instead of having time to code, if I didn’t know I’d be fine if Facebook didn’t work out, I wouldn’t be standing here today. If we’re honest, we all know how much luck we’ve had.

Every generation expands its definition of equality. Previous generations fought for the vote and civil rights. They had the New Deal and Great Society. Now it’s our time to define a new social contract for our generation.

We should have a society that measures progress not just by economic metrics like GDP, but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things. We’re going to change jobs many times, so we need affordable childcare to get to work and healthcare that aren’t tied to one company. We’re all going to make mistakes, so we need a society that focuses less on locking us up or stigmatizing us. And as technology keeps changing, we need to focus more on continuous education throughout our lives.

And yes, giving everyone the freedom to pursue purpose isn’t free. People like me should pay for it. Many of you will do well and you should too.

That’s why Priscilla and I started the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and committed our wealth to promoting equal opportunity. These are the values of our generation. It was never a question of if we were going to do this. The only question was when.

Millennials are already one of the most charitable generations in history. In one year, three of four US millennials made a donation and seven out of ten raised money for charity.

But it’s not just about money. You can also give time. I promise you, if you take an hour or two a week — that’s all it takes to give someone a hand, to help them reach their potential.

Maybe you think that’s too much time. I used to. When Priscilla graduated from Harvard she became a teacher, and before she’d do education work with me, she told me I needed to teach a class. I complained: “Well, I’m kind of busy. I’m running this company.” But she insisted, so I taught a middle school program on entrepreneurship at the local Boys and Girls Club.

I taught them lessons on product development and marketing, and they taught me what it’s like feeling targeted for your race and having a family member in prison. I shared stories from my time in school, and they shared their hope of one day going to college too. For five years now, I’ve been having dinner with those kids every month. One of them threw me and Priscilla our first baby shower. And next year they’re going to college. Every one of them. First in their families.

We can all make time to give someone a hand. Let’s give everyone the freedom to pursue their purpose — not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because when more people can turn their dreams into something great, we’re all better for it.

Purpose doesn’t only come from work. The third way we can create a sense of purpose for everyone is by building community. And when our generation says “everyone”, we mean everyone in the world.

Quick show of hands: how many of you are from another country? Now, how many of you are friends with one of these folks? Now we’re talking. We have grown up connected.

In a survey asking millennials around the world what defines our identity, the most popular answer wasn’t nationality, religion or ethnicity, it was “citizen of the world”. That’s a big deal.

Every generation expands the circle of people we consider “one of us”. For us, it now encompasses the entire world.

We understand the great arc of human history bends towards people coming together in ever greater numbers — from tribes to cities to nations — to achieve things we couldn’t on our own.

We get that our greatest opportunities are now global — we can be the generation that ends poverty, that ends disease. We get that our greatest challenges need global responses too — no country can fight climate change alone or prevent pandemics. Progress now requires coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community.

But we live in an unstable time. There are people left behind by globalization across the world. It’s hard to care about people in other places if we don’t feel good about our lives here at home. There’s pressure to turn inwards.

This is the struggle of our time. The forces of freedom, openness and global community against the forces of authoritarianism, isolationism and nationalism. Forces for the flow of knowledge, trade and immigration against those who would slow them down. This is not a battle of nations, it’s a battle of ideas. There are people in every country for global connection and good people against it.

This isn’t going to be decided at the UN either. It’s going to happen at the local level, when enough of us feel a sense of purpose and stability in our own lives that we can open up and start caring about everyone. The best way to do that is to start building local communities right now.

We all get meaning from our communities. Whether our communities are houses or sports teams, churches or music groups, they give us that sense we are part of something bigger, that we are not alone; they give us the strength to expand our horizons.

That’s why it’s so striking that for decades, membership in all kinds of groups has declined as much as one-quarter. That’s a lot of people who now need to find purpose somewhere else.

But I know we can rebuild our communities and start new ones because many of you already are.

I met Agnes Igoye, who’s graduating today. Where are you, Agnes? She spent her childhood navigating conflict zones in Uganda, and now she trains thousands of law enforcement officers to keep communities safe.

I met Kayla Oakley and Niha Jain, graduating today, too. Stand up. Kayla and Niha started a non-profit that connects people suffering from illnesses with people in their communities willing to help.

I met David Razu Aznar, graduating from the Kennedy School today. David, stand up. He’s a former city councilor who successfully led the battle to make Mexico City the first Latin American city to pass marriage equality — even before San Francisco.

This is my story too. A student in a dorm room, connecting one community at a time, and keeping at it until one day we connect the whole world.

Change starts local. Even global changes start small — with people like us. In our generation, the struggle of whether we connect more, whether we achieve our biggest opportunities, comes down to this — your ability to build communities and create a world where every single person has a sense of purpose.

Class of 2017, you are graduating into a world that needs purpose. It’s up to you to create it.

Now, you may be thinking: can I really do this?

Remember when I told you about that class I taught at the Boys and Girls Club? One day after class I was talking to them about college, and one of my top students raised his hand and said he wasn’t sure he could go because he’s undocumented. He didn’t know if they’d let him in.

Last year I took him out to breakfast for his birthday. I wanted to get him a present, so I asked him and he started talking about students he saw struggling and said “You know, I’d really just like a book on social justice.”

I was blown away. Here’s a young guy who has every reason to be cynical. He didn’t know if the country he calls home — the only one he’s known — would deny him his dream of going to college. But he wasn’t feeling sorry for himself. He wasn’t even thinking of himself. He has a greater sense of purpose, and he’s going to bring people along with him.

It says something about our current situation that I can’t even say his name because I don’t want to put him at risk. But if a high school senior who doesn’t know what the future holds can do his part to move the world forward, then we owe it to the world to do our part too.

“May the source of strength, who blessed the ones before us, help us *find the courage* to make our lives a blessing.”

I hope you find the courage to make your life a blessing.

Congratulations, Class of ’17! Good luck out there.

Share this article

Epic science inside a cubic millimeter of brain

Researchers publish largest-ever dataset of neural connections

Good genes are nice, but joy is better

Harvard study, almost 80 years old, has proved that embracing community helps us live longer, and be happier

Finding right mix on campus speech policies

Legal, political scholars discuss balancing personal safety, constitutional rights, academic freedom amid roiling protests, cultural shifts

Read Mark Zuckerberg’s full commencement address at Harvard

Zuckerberg returned to his alma mater Thursday to encourage Harvard’s graduates to go save the world.

by Kurt Wagner

Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg Delivers Commencement Address At Harvard

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave an impassioned — and at times emotional — 30-minute commencement address Thursday at Harvard College, the school where he created Facebook before dropping out over 10 years ago.

Zuckerberg’s speech was themed around the idea of finding purpose, both in your own life and in the lives of other people. He also touched on a number of important political themes, including the rising cost of education and the dangers of climate change.

You can read the full speech, courtesy of Facebook , below.

Harvard Commencement 2017

President Faust, Board of Overseers, faculty, alumni, friends, proud parents, members of the ad board, and graduates of the greatest university in the world,

I'm honored to be with you today because, let's face it, you accomplished something I never could. If I get through this speech, it'll be the first time I actually finish something at Harvard. Class of 2017, congratulations!

I'm an unlikely speaker, not just because I dropped out, but because we're technically in the same generation. We walked this yard less than a decade apart, studied the same ideas and slept through the same Ec10 lectures. We may have taken different paths to get here, especially if you came all the way from the Quad, but today I want to share what I've learned about our generation and the world we're building together.

But first, the last couple of days have brought back a lot of good memories.

What about your first lecture at Harvard? Mine was Computer Science 121 with the incredible Harry Lewis. I was late so I threw on a t-shirt and didn't realize until afterwards it was inside out and backwards with my tag sticking out the front. I couldn't figure out why no one would talk to me -- except one guy, KX Jin, he just went with it. We ended up doing our problem sets together, and now he runs a big part of Facebook. And that, Class of 2017, is why you should be nice to people.

But my best memory from Harvard was meeting Priscilla. I had just launched this prank website Facemash, and the ad board wanted to "see me". Everyone thought I was going to get kicked out. My parents came to help me pack. My friends threw me a going away party. As luck would have it, Priscilla was at that party with her friend. We met in line for the bathroom in the Pfoho Belltower, and in what must be one of the all time romantic lines, I said: "I'm going to get kicked out in three days, so we need to go on a date quickly."

Actually, any of you graduating can use that line.

I didn't end up getting kicked out -- I did that to myself. Priscilla and I started dating. And, you know, that movie made it seem like Facemash was so important to creating Facebook. It wasn't. But without Facemash I wouldn't have met Priscilla, and she's the most important person in my life, so you could say it was the most important thing I built in my time here.

We've all started lifelong friendships here, and some of us even families. That's why I'm so grateful to this place. Thanks, Harvard.

Today I want to talk about purpose. But I'm not here to give you the standard commencement about finding your purpose. We're millennials. We'll try to do that instinctively. Instead, I'm here to tell you finding your purpose isn't enough. The challenge for our generation is creating a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.

One of my favorite stories is when John F Kennedy visited the NASA space center, he saw a janitor carrying a broom and he walked over and asked what he was doing. The janitor responded: "Mr. President, I'm helping put a man on the moon".

Purpose is that sense that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that we are needed, that we have something better ahead to work for. Purpose is what creates true happiness.

You're graduating at a time when this is especially important. When our parents graduated, purpose reliably came from your job, your church, your community. But today, technology and automation are eliminating many jobs. Membership in communities is declining. Many people feel disconnected and depressed, and are trying to fill a void.

As I've traveled around, I've sat with children in juvenile detention and opioid addicts, who told me their lives could have turned out differently if they just had something to do, an after school program or somewhere to go. I've met factory workers who know their old jobs aren't coming back and are trying to find their place.

To keep our society moving forward, we have a generational challenge -- to not only create new jobs, but create a renewed sense of purpose.

I remember the night I launched Facebook from my little dorm in Kirkland House. I went to Noch's with my friend KX. I remember telling him I was excited to connect the Harvard community, but one day someone would connect the whole world.

The thing is, it never even occurred to me that someone might be us. We were just college kids. We didn't know anything about that. There were all these big technology companies with resources. I just assumed one of them would do it. But this idea was so clear to us -- that all people want to connect. So we just kept moving forward, day by day.

I know a lot of you will have your own stories just like this. A change in the world that seems so clear you're sure someone else will do it. But they won't. You will.

But it's not enough to have purpose yourself. You have to create a sense of purpose for others.

I found that out the hard way. You see, my hope was never to build a company, but to make an impact. And as all these people started joining us, I just assumed that's what they cared about too, so I never explained what I hoped we'd build.

A couple years in, some big companies wanted to buy us. I didn't want to sell. I wanted to see if we could connect more people. We were building the first News Feed, and I thought if we could just launch this, it could change how we learn about the world.

Nearly everyone else wanted to sell. Without a sense of higher purpose, this was the startup dream come true. It tore our company apart. After one tense argument, an advisor told me if I didn't agree to sell, I would regret the decision for the rest of my life. Relationships were so frayed that within a year or so every single person on the management team was gone.

Now, years later, I understand that *is* how things work with no sense of higher purpose. It's up to us to create it so we can all keep moving forward together.

First, let's take on big meaningful projects.

Our generation will have to deal with tens of millions of jobs replaced by automation like self-driving cars and trucks. But we have the potential to do so much more together.

These projects didn't just provide purpose for the people doing those jobs, they gave our whole country a sense of pride that we could do great things.

Now it's our turn to do great things. I know, you're probably thinking: I don't know how to build a dam, or get a million people involved in anything.

But let me tell you a secret: no one does when they begin. Ideas don't come out fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started.

If I had to understand everything about connecting people before I began, I never would have started Facebook.

Movies and pop culture get this all wrong. The idea of a single eureka moment is a dangerous lie. It makes us feel inadequate since we haven't had ours. It prevents people with seeds of good ideas from getting started. Oh, you know what else movies get wrong about innovation? No one writes math formulas on glass. That's not a thing.

It's good to be idealistic. But be prepared to be misunderstood. Anyone working on a big vision will get called crazy, even if you end up right. Anyone working on a complex problem will get blamed for not fully understanding the challenge, even though it's impossible to know everything upfront. Anyone taking initiative will get criticized for moving too fast, because there's always someone who wants to slow you down.

In our society, we often don't do big things because we're so afraid of making mistakes that we ignore all the things wrong today if we do nothing. The reality is, anything we do will have issues in the future. But that can't keep us from starting.

So what are we waiting for? It's time for our generation-defining public works. How about stopping climate change before we destroy the planet and getting millions of people involved manufacturing and installing solar panels? How about curing all diseases and asking volunteers to track their health data and share their genomes? Today we spend 50x more treating people who are sick than we spend finding cures so people don’t get sick in the first place. That makes no sense. We can fix this. How about modernizing democracy so everyone can vote online, and personalizing education so everyone can learn?

These achievements are within our reach. Let's do them all in a way that gives everyone in our society a role. Let's do big things, not only to create progress, but to create purpose.

So taking on big meaningful projects is the first thing we can do to create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.

The second is redefining equality to give everyone the freedom they need to pursue purpose.

Many of our parents had stable jobs throughout their careers. Now we're all entrepreneurial, whether we're starting projects or finding or role. And that's great. Our culture of entrepreneurship is how we create so much progress.

Now, an entrepreneurial culture thrives when it's easy to try lots of new ideas. Facebook wasn't the first thing I built. I also built games, chat systems, study tools and music players. I'm not alone. JK Rowling got rejected 12 times before publishing Harry Potter. Even Beyonce had to make hundreds of songs to get Halo. The greatest successes come from having the freedom to fail.

But today, we have a level of wealth inequality that hurts everyone. When you don't have the freedom to take your idea and turn it into a historic enterprise, we all lose. Right now our society is way over-indexed on rewarding success and we don't do nearly enough to make it easy for everyone to take lots of shots.

Let's face it. There is something wrong with our system when I can leave here and make billions of dollars in 10 years while millions of students can't afford to pay off their loans, let alone start a business.

Look, I know a lot of entrepreneurs, and I don't know a single person who gave up on starting a business because they might not make enough money. But I know lots of people who haven't pursued dreams because they didn't have a cushion to fall back on if they failed.

We all know we don't succeed just by having a good idea or working hard. We succeed by being lucky too. If I had to support my family growing up instead of having time to code, if I didn't know I'd be fine if Facebook didn't work out, I wouldn't be standing here today. If we're honest, we all know how much luck we've had.

Every generation expands its definition of equality. Previous generations fought for the vote and civil rights. They had the New Deal and Great Society. Now it's our time to define a new social contract for our generation.

We should have a society that measures progress not just by economic metrics like GDP, but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things. We’re going to change jobs many times, so we need affordable childcare to get to work and healthcare that aren't tied to one company. We're all going to make mistakes, so we need a society that focuses less on locking us up or stigmatizing us. And as technology keeps changing, we need to focus more on continuous education throughout our lives.

And yes, giving everyone the freedom to pursue purpose isn't free. People like me should pay for it. Many of you will do well and you should too.

That's why Priscilla and I started the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and committed our wealth to promoting equal opportunity. These are the values of our generation. It was never a question of if we were going to do this. The only question was when.

Millennials are already one of the most charitable generations in history. In one year, three of four US millennials made a donation and seven out of ten raised money for charity.

But it's not just about money. You can also give time. I promise you, if you take an hour or two a week -- that's all it takes to give someone a hand, to help them reach their potential.

Maybe you think that's too much time. I used to. When Priscilla graduated from Harvard she became a teacher, and before she'd do education work with me, she told me I needed to teach a class. I complained: "Well, I'm kind of busy. I'm running this company." But she insisted, so I taught a middle school program on entrepreneurship at the local Boys and Girls Club.

I taught them lessons on product development and marketing, and they taught me what it's like feeling targeted for your race and having a family member in prison. I shared stories from my time in school, and they shared their hope of one day going to college too. For five years now, I’ve been having dinner with those kids every month. One of them threw me and Priscilla our first baby shower. And next year they’re going to college. Every one of them. First in their families.

We can all make time to give someone a hand. Let's give everyone the freedom to pursue their purpose -- not only because it's the right thing to do, but because when more people can turn their dreams into something great, we're all better for it.

Purpose doesn't only come from work. The third way we can create a sense of purpose for everyone is by building community. And when our generation says "everyone", we mean everyone in the world.

Quick show of hands: how many of you are from another country? Now, how many of you are friends with one of these folks? Now we're talking. We have grown up connected.

In a survey asking millennials around the world what defines our identity, the most popular answer wasn't nationality, religion or ethnicity, it was "citizen of the world". That's a big deal.

Every generation expands the circle of people we consider "one of us". For us, it now encompasses the entire world.

We understand the great arc of human history bends towards people coming together in ever greater numbers -- from tribes to cities to nations -- to achieve things we couldn't on our own.

We get that our greatest opportunities are now global -- we can be the generation that ends poverty, that ends disease. We get that our greatest challenges need global responses too -- no country can fight climate change alone or prevent pandemics. Progress now requires coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community.

But we live in an unstable time. There are people left behind by globalization across the world. It's hard to care about people in other places if we don’t feel good about our lives here at home. There’s pressure to turn inwards.

This is the struggle of our time. The forces of freedom, openness and global community against the forces of authoritarianism, isolationism and nationalism. Forces for the flow of knowledge, trade and immigration against those who would slow them down. This is not a battle of nations, it's a battle of ideas. There are people in every country for global connection and good people against it.

This isn't going to be decided at the UN either. It's going to happen at the local level, when enough of us feel a sense of purpose and stability in our own lives that we can open up and start caring about everyone. The best way to do that is to start building local communities right now.

That's why it's so striking that for decades, membership in all kinds of groups has declined as much as one-quarter. That's a lot of people who now need to find purpose somewhere else.

But I know we can rebuild our communities and start new ones because many of you already are.

I met Agnes Igoye, who's graduating today. Where are you, Agnes? She spent her childhood navigating conflict zones in Uganda, and now she trains thousands of law enforcement officers to keep communities safe.

I met Kayla Oakley and Niha Jain, graduating today, too. Stand up. Kayla and Niha started a non-profit that connects people suffering from illnesses with people in their communities willing to help.

This is my story too. A student in a dorm room, connecting one community at a time, and keeping at it until one day we connect the whole world.

Change starts local. Even global changes start small -- with people like us. In our generation, the struggle of whether we connect more, whether we achieve our biggest opportunities, comes down to this -- your ability to build communities and create a world where every single person has a sense of purpose.

Class of 2017, you are graduating into a world that needs purpose. It's up to you to create it.

Now, you may be thinking: can I really do this?

Remember when I told you about that class I taught at the Boys and Girls Club? One day after class I was talking to them about college, and one of my top students raised his hand and said he wasn't sure he could go because he's undocumented. He didn't know if they'd let him in.

Last year I took him out to breakfast for his birthday. I wanted to get him a present, so I asked him and he started talking about students he saw struggling and said "You know, I'd really just like a book on social justice."

I was blown away. Here's a young guy who has every reason to be cynical. He didn't know if the country he calls home -- the only one he's known -- would deny him his dream of going to college. But he wasn't feeling sorry for himself. He wasn't even thinking of himself. He has a greater sense of purpose, and he's going to bring people along with him.

It says something about our current situation that I can't even say his name because I don't want to put him at risk. But if a high school senior who doesn't know what the future holds can do his part to move the world forward, then we owe it to the world to do our part too.

"May the source of strength, who blessed the ones before us, help us *find the courage* to make our lives a blessing."

I hope you find the courage to make your life a blessing.

Congratulations, Class of '17! Good luck out there.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Most Popular

Massive invasive snakes are on the loose and spreading in puerto rico, why are whole-body deodorants suddenly everywhere, what the death of iran’s president could mean for its future, take a mental break with the newest vox crossword, if trump wins, what would hold him back, today, explained.

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

More in Technology

“I lost trust”: Why the OpenAI team in charge of safeguarding humanity imploded

ChatGPT can talk, but OpenAI employees sure can’t

Teletherapy can really help, and really hurt

Meme stocks like GameStop are soaring like it’s 2021

How a bunch of Redditors made GameStop’s stock soar

How TikTok Shop ads turned an obscure, inaccurate book into a bestseller

Why the US built a pier to get aid into Gaza

Vanderpump Rules shows the limits of making money on reality TV

Bridgerton’s third season is more diverse — and even shallower — than ever

The misleading, wasteful way we measure gas mileage, explained

The Republican Party's man inside the Supreme Court

$Why Trump's running mate could be the most important VP pick of our time$

Why Trump's running mate could be the most important VP pick of our time

clock This article was published more than 4 years ago

Zuckerberg: Standing For Voice and Free Expression

This is the text of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s speech at Georgetown University. Facebook provided the transcript.

Hey everyone. It’s great to be here at Georgetown with all of you today.

Before we get started, I want to acknowledge that today we lost an icon, Elijah Cummings. He was a powerful voice for equality, social progress and bringing people together.

When I was in college, our country had just gone to war in Iraq. The mood on campus was disbelief. It felt like we were acting without hearing a lot of important perspectives. The toll on soldiers, families and our national psyche was severe, and most of us felt powerless to stop it. I remember feeling that if more people had a voice to share their experiences, maybe things would have gone differently. Those early years shaped my belief that giving everyone a voice empowers the powerless and pushes society to be better over time.

Back then, I was building an early version of Facebook for my community, and I got to see my beliefs play out at smaller scale. When students got to express who they were and what mattered to them, they organized more social events, started more businesses, and even challenged some established ways of doing things on campus. It taught me that while the world’s attention focuses on major events and institutions, the bigger story is that most progress in our lives comes from regular people having more of a voice.

GET CAUGHT UP

The surprising reasons thunderstorms are more destructive than ever

A German prince is on trial for an alleged coup plot. Here’s what to know.

Iran’s president was flying in U.S.-designed helicopter when it crashed

Ivan Boesky, epitome of Wall Street trading scandal, dies at 87

Scarlett Johansson says OpenAI copied ‘Her’ voice after she said no

Since then, I’ve focused on building services to do two things: give people voice, and bring people together. These two simple ideas — voice and inclusion — go hand in hand. We’ve seen this throughout history, even if it doesn’t feel that way today. More people being able to share their perspectives has always been necessary to build a more inclusive society. And our mutual commitment to each other — that we hold each others’ right to express our views and be heard above our own desire to always get the outcomes we want — is how we make progress together.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says in interview he fears “erosion of truth” but defends allowing politicians to lie in ads

But this view is increasingly being challenged. Some people believe giving more people a voice is driving division rather than bringing us together. More people across the spectrum believe that achieving the political outcomes they think matter is more important than every person having a voice. I think that’s dangerous. Today I want to talk about why, and some important choices we face around free expression.

Throughout history, we’ve seen how being able to use your voice helps people come together. We’ve seen this in the civil rights movement. Frederick Douglass once called free expression “the great moral renovator of society”. He said “slavery cannot tolerate free speech”. Civil rights leaders argued time and again that their protests were protected free expression, and one noted: “nearly all the cases involving the civil rights movement were decided on First Amendment grounds”.

We’ve seen this globally too, where the ability to speak freely has been central in the fight for democracy worldwide. The most repressive societies have always restricted speech the most — and when people are finally able to speak, they often call for change. This year alone, people have used their voices to end multiple long-running dictatorships in Northern Africa. And we’re already hearing from voices in those countries that had been excluded just because they were women, or they believed in democracy.

Our idea of free expression has become much broader over even the last 100 years. Many Americans know about the Enlightenment history and how we enshrined the First Amendment in our constitution, but fewer know how dramatically our cultural norms and legal protections have expanded, even in recent history.

The first Supreme Court case to seriously consider free speech and the First Amendment was in 1919, Schenk vs the United States. Back then, the First Amendment only applied to the federal government, and states could and often did restrict your right to speak. Our ability to call out things we felt were wrong also used to be much more restricted. Libel laws used to impose damages if you wrote something negative about someone, even if it was true. The standard later shifted so it became okay as long as you could prove your critique was true. We didn’t get the broad free speech protections we have now until the 1960s, when the Supreme Court ruled in opinions like New York Times vs Sullivan that you can criticize public figures as long as you’re not doing so with actual malice, even if what you’re saying is false.

We now have significantly broader power to call out things we feel are unjust and share our own personal experiences. Movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo went viral on Facebook — the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was actually first used on Facebook — and this just wouldn’t have been possible in the same way before. 100 years back, many of the stories people have shared would have been against the law to even write down. And without the internet giving people the power to share them directly, they certainly wouldn’t have reached as many people. With Facebook, more than 2 billion people now have a greater opportunity to express themselves and help others.

While it’s easy to focus on major social movements, it’s important to remember that most progress happens in our everyday lives. It’s the Air Force moms who started a Facebook group so their children and other service members who can’t get home for the holidays have a place to go. It’s the church group that came together during a hurricane to provide food and volunteer to help with recovery. It’s the small business on the corner that now has access to the same sophisticated tools only the big guys used to, and now they can get their voice out and reach more customers, create jobs and become a hub in their local community. Progress and social cohesion come from billions of stories like this around the world.

People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world — a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society. People no longer have to rely on traditional gatekeepers in politics or media to make their voices heard, and that has important consequences. I understand the concerns about how tech platforms have centralized power, but I actually believe the much bigger story is how much these platforms have decentralized power by putting it directly into people’s hands. It’s part of this amazing expansion of voice through law, culture and technology.

So giving people a voice and broader inclusion go hand in hand, and the trend has been towards greater voice over time. But there’s also a counter-trend. In times of social turmoil, our impulse is often to pull back on free expression. We want the progress that comes from free expression, but not the tension.

We saw this when Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous letter from Birmingham Jail, where he was unconstitutionally jailed for protesting peacefully. We saw this in the efforts to shut down campus protests against the Vietnam War. We saw this way back when America was deeply polarized about its role in World War I, and the Supreme Court ruled that socialist leader Eugene Debs could be imprisoned for making an anti-war speech.

In the end, all of these decisions were wrong. Pulling back on free expression wasn’t the answer and, in fact, it often ended up hurting the minority views we seek to protect. From where we are now, it seems obvious that, of course, protests for civil rights or against wars should be allowed. Yet the desire to suppress this expression was felt deeply by much of society at the time.

Today, we are in another time of social tension. We face real issues that will take a long time to work through — massive economic transitions from globalization and technology, fallout from the 2008 financial crisis, and polarized reactions to greater migration. Many of our issues flow from these changes.

In the face of these tensions, once again a popular impulse is to pull back from free expression. We’re at another cross-roads. We can continue to stand for free expression, understanding its messiness, but believing that the long journey towards greater progress requires confronting ideas that challenge us. Or we can decide the cost is simply too great. I’m here today because I believe we must continue to stand for free expression.

At the same time, I know that free expression has never been absolute. Some people argue internet platforms should allow all expression protected by the First Amendment, even though the First Amendment explicitly doesn’t apply to companies. I’m proud that our values at Facebook are inspired by the American tradition, which is more supportive of free expression than anywhere else. But even American tradition recognizes that some speech infringes on others’ rights. And still, a strict First Amendment standard might require us to allow terrorist propaganda, bullying young people and more that almost everyone agrees we should stop — and I certainly do — as well as content like pornography that would make people uncomfortable using our platforms.

So once we’re taking this content down, the question is: where do you draw the line? Most people agree with the principles that you should be able to say things other people don’t like, but you shouldn’t be able to say things that put people in danger. The shift over the past several years is that many people would now argue that more speech is dangerous than would have before. This raises the question of exactly what counts as dangerous speech online. It’s worth examining this in detail.

Many arguments about online speech are related to new properties of the internet itself. If you believe the internet is completely different from everything before it, then it doesn’t make sense to focus on historical precedent. But we should be careful of overly broad arguments since they’ve been made about almost every new technology, from the printing press to radio to TV. Instead, let’s consider the specific ways the internet is different and how internet services like ours might address those risks while protecting free expression.

One clear difference is that a lot more people now have a voice — almost half the world. That’s dramatically empowering for all the reasons I’ve mentioned. But inevitably some people will use their voice to organize violence, undermine elections or hurt others, and we have a responsibility to address these risks. When you’re serving billions of people, even if a very small percent cause harm, that can still be a lot of harm.

We build specific systems to address each type of harmful content — from incitement of violence to child exploitation to other harms like intellectual property violations — about 20 categories in total. We judge ourselves by the prevalence of harmful content and what percent we find proactively before anyone reports it to us. For example, our AI systems identify 99% of the terrorist content we take down before anyone even sees it. This is a massive investment. We now have over 35,000 people working on security, and our security budget today is greater than the entire revenue of our company at the time of our IPO earlier this decade.

All of this work is about enforcing our existing policies, not broadening our definition of what is dangerous. If we do this well, we should be able to stop a lot of harm while fighting back against putting additional restrictions on speech.

Another important difference is how quickly ideas can spread online. Most people can now get much more reach than they ever could before. This is at the heart of a lot of the positive uses of the internet. It’s empowering that anyone can start a fundraiser, share an idea, build a business, or create a movement that can grow quickly. But we’ve seen this go the other way too — most notably when Russia’s IRA tried to interfere in the 2016 elections, but also when misinformation has gone viral. Some people argue that virality itself is dangerous, and we need tighter filters on what content can spread quickly.

For misinformation, we focus on making sure complete hoaxes don’t go viral. We especially focus on misinformation that could lead to imminent physical harm, like misleading health advice saying if you’re having a stroke, no need to go to the hospital.

More broadly though, we’ve found a different strategy works best: focusing on the authenticity of the speaker rather than the content itself. Much of the content the Russian accounts shared was distasteful but would have been considered permissible political discourse if it were shared by Americans — the real issue was that it was posted by fake accounts coordinating together and pretending to be someone else. We’ve seen a similar issue with these groups that pump out misinformation like spam just to make money.

The solution is to verify the identities of accounts getting wide distribution and get better at removing fake accounts. We now require you to provide a government ID and prove your location if you want to run political ads or a large page. You can still say controversial things, but you have to stand behind them with your real identity and face accountability. Our AI systems have also gotten more advanced at detecting clusters of fake accounts that aren’t behaving like humans. We now remove billions of fake accounts a year — most within minutes of registering and before they do much. Focusing on authenticity and verifying accounts is a much better solution than an ever-expanding definition of what speech is harmful.

Another qualitative difference is the internet lets people form communities that wouldn’t have been possible before. This is good because it helps people find groups where they belong and share interests. But the flip side is this has the potential to lead to polarization. I care a lot about this — after all, our goal is to bring people together.

Much of the research I’ve seen is mixed and suggests the internet could actually decrease aspects of polarization. The most polarized voters in the last presidential election were the people least likely to use the internet. Research from the Reuters Institute also shows people who get their news online actually have a much more diverse media diet than people who don’t, and they’re exposed to a broader range of viewpoints. This is because most people watch only a couple of cable news stations or read only a couple of newspapers, but even if most of your friends online have similar views, you usually have some that are different, and you get exposed to different perspectives through them. Still, we have an important role in designing our systems to show a diversity of ideas and not encourage polarizing content.

One last difference with the internet is it lets people share things that would have been impossible before. Take live-streaming, for example. This allows families to be together for moments like birthdays and even weddings, schoolteachers to read bedtime stories to kids who might not be read to, and people to witness some very important events. But we’ve also seen people broadcast self-harm, suicide, and terrible violence. These are new challenges and our responsibility is to build systems that can respond quickly.

We’re particularly focused on well-being, especially for young people. We built a team of thousands of people and AI systems that can detect risks of self-harm within minutes so we can reach out when people need help most. In the last year, we’ve helped first responders reach people who needed help thousands of times.

For each of these issues, I believe we have two responsibilities: to remove content when it could cause real danger as effectively as we can, and to fight to uphold as wide a definition of freedom of expression as possible — and not allow the definition of what is considered dangerous to expand beyond what is absolutely necessary. That’s what I’m committed to.

But beyond these new properties of the internet, there are also shifting cultural sensitivities and diverging views on what people consider dangerous content.

Take misinformation. No one tells us they want to see misinformation. That’s why we work with independent fact checkers to stop hoaxes that are going viral from spreading. But misinformation is a pretty broad category. A lot of people like satire, which isn’t necessarily true. A lot of people talk about their experiences through stories that may be exaggerated or have inaccuracies, but speak to a deeper truth in their lived experience. We need to be careful about restricting that. Even when there is a common set of facts, different media outlets tell very different stories emphasizing different angles. There’s a lot of nuance here. And while I worry about an erosion of truth, I don’t think most people want to live in a world where you can only post things that tech companies judge to be 100% true.

We recently clarified our policies to ensure people can see primary source speech from political figures that shapes civic discourse. Political advertising is more transparent on Facebook than anywhere else — we keep all political and issue ads in an archive so everyone can scrutinize them, and no TV or print does that. We don’t fact-check political ads. We don’t do this to help politicians, but because we think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying. And if content is newsworthy, we also won’t take it down even if it would otherwise conflict with many of our standards.

I know many people disagree, but, in general, I don’t think it’s right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy. And we’re not an outlier here. The other major internet platforms and the vast majority of media also run these same ads.

American tradition also has some precedent here. The Supreme Court case I mentioned earlier that gave us our current broad speech rights, New York Times vs Sullivan, was actually about an ad with misinformation, supporting Martin Luther King Jr. and criticizing an Alabama police department. The police commissioner sued the Times for running the ad, the jury in Alabama found against the Times, and the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the decision, creating today’s speech standard.

As a principle, in a democracy, I believe people should decide what is credible, not tech companies. Of course there are exceptions, and even for politicians we don’t allow content that incites violence or risks imminent harm — and of course we don’t allow voter suppression. Voting is voice. Fighting voter suppression may be as important for the civil rights movement as free expression has been. Just as we’re inspired by the First Amendment, we’re inspired by the 15th Amendment too.

Given the sensitivity around political ads, I’ve considered whether we should stop allowing them altogether. From a business perspective, the controversy certainly isn’t worth the small part of our business they make up. But political ads are an important part of voice — especially for local candidates, up-and-coming challengers, and advocacy groups that may not get much media attention otherwise. Banning political ads favors incumbents and whoever the media covers.

Even if we wanted to ban political ads, it’s not clear where we’d draw the line. There are many more ads about issues than there are directly about elections. Would we ban all ads about healthcare or immigration or women’s empowerment? If we banned candidates’ ads but not these, would that really make sense to give everyone else a voice in political debates except the candidates themselves? There are issues any way you cut this, and when it’s not absolutely clear what to do, I believe we should err on the side of greater expression.

Or take hate speech, which we define as someone directly attacking a person or group based on a characteristic like race, gender or religion. We take down content that could lead to real world violence. In countries at risk of conflict, that includes anything that could lead to imminent violence or genocide. And we know from history that dehumanizing people is the first step towards inciting violence. If you say immigrants are vermin, or all Muslims are terrorists — that makes others feel they can escalate and attack that group without consequences. So we don’t allow that. I take this incredibly seriously, and we work hard to get this off our platform.

American free speech tradition recognizes that some speech can have the effect of restricting others’ right to speak. While American law doesn’t recognize “hate speech” as a category, it does prohibit racial harassment and sexual harassment. We still have a strong culture of free expression even while our laws prohibit discrimination.

But still, people have broad disagreements over what qualifies as hate and shouldn’t be allowed. Some people think our policies don’t prohibit content they think qualifies as hate, while others think what we take down should be a protected form of expression. This area is one of the hardest to get right.

I believe people should be able to use our services to discuss issues they feel strongly about — from religion and immigration to foreign policy and crime. You should even be able to be critical of groups without dehumanizing them. But even this isn’t always straightforward to judge at scale, and it often leads to enforcement mistakes. Is someone re-posting a video of a racist attack because they’re condemning it, or glorifying and encouraging people to copy it? Are they using normal slang, or using an innocent word in a new way to incite violence? Now multiply those linguistic challenges by more than 100 languages around the world.

Rules about what you can and can’t say often have unintended consequences. When speech restrictions were implemented in the UK in the last century, parliament noted they were applied more heavily to citizens from poorer backgrounds because the way they expressed things didn’t match the elite Oxbridge style. In everything we do, we need to make sure we’re empowering people, not simply reinforcing existing institutions and power structures.

That brings us back to the cross-roads we all find ourselves at today. Will we continue fighting to give more people a voice to be heard, or will we pull back from free expression?

I see three major threats ahead:

The first is legal. We’re increasingly seeing laws and regulations around the world that undermine free expression and people’s human rights. These local laws are each individually troubling, especially when they shut down speech in places where there isn’t democracy or freedom of the press. But it’s even worse when countries try to impose their speech restrictions on the rest of the world.

This raises a larger question about the future of the global internet. China is building its own internet focused on very different values, and is now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries. Until recently, the internet in almost every country outside China has been defined by American platforms with strong free expression values. There’s no guarantee these values will win out. A decade ago, almost all of the major internet platforms were American. Today, six of the top ten are Chinese.

We’re beginning to see this in social media. While our services, like WhatsApp, are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong encryption and privacy protections, on TikTok, the Chinese app growing quickly around the world, mentions of these protests are censored, even in the US.

Is that the internet we want?

It’s one of the reasons we don’t operate Facebook, Instagram or our other services in China. I wanted our services in China because I believe in connecting the whole world and I thought we might help create a more open society. I worked hard to make this happen. But we could never come to agreement on what it would take for us to operate there, and they never let us in. And now we have more freedom to speak out and stand up for the values we believe in and fight for free expression around the world.

This question of which nation’s values will determine what speech is allowed for decades to come really puts into perspective our debates about the content issues of the day. While we may disagree on exactly where to draw the line on specific issues, we at least can disagree. That’s what free expression is. And the fact that we can even have this conversation means that we’re at least debating from some common values. If another nation’s platforms set the rules, our discourse will be defined by a completely different set of values.

To push back against this, as we all work to define internet policy and regulation to address public safety, we should also be proactive and write policy that helps the values of voice and expression triumph around the world.

The second challenge to expression is the platforms themselves — including us. Because the reality is we make a lot of decisions that affect people’s ability to speak.

I’m committed to the values we’re discussing today, but we won’t always get it right. I understand people are concerned that we have so much control over how they communicate on our services. And I understand people are concerned about bias and making sure their ideas are treated fairly. Frankly, I don’t think we should be making so many important decisions about speech on our own either. We’d benefit from a more democratic process, clearer rules for the internet, and new institutions.

That’s why we’re establishing an independent Oversight Board for people to appeal our content decisions. The board will have the power to make final binding decisions about whether content stays up or comes down on our services — decisions that our team and I can’t overturn. We’re going to appoint members to this board who have a diversity of views and backgrounds, but who each hold free expression as their paramount value.

Building this institution is important to me personally because I’m not always going to be here, and I want to ensure the values of voice and free expression are enshrined deeply into how this company is governed.

The third challenge to expression is the hardest because it comes from our culture. We’re at a moment of particular tension here and around the world — and we’re seeing the impulse to restrict speech and enforce new norms around what people can say.

Increasingly, we’re seeing people try to define more speech as dangerous because it may lead to political outcomes they see as unacceptable. Some hold the view that since the stakes are so high, they can no longer trust their fellow citizens with the power to communicate and decide what to believe for themselves.

I personally believe this is more dangerous for democracy over the long term than almost any speech. Democracy depends on the idea that we hold each others’ right to express ourselves and be heard above our own desire to always get the outcomes we want. You can’t impose tolerance top-down. It has to come from people opening up, sharing experiences, and developing a shared story for society that we all feel we’re a part of. That’s how we make progress together.

So how do we turn the tide? Someone once told me our founding fathers thought free expression was like air. You don’t miss it until it’s gone. When people don’t feel they can express themselves, they lose faith in democracy and they’re more likely to support populist parties that prioritize specific policy goals over the health of our democratic norms.

I’m a little more optimistic. I don’t think we need to lose our freedom of expression to realize how important it is. I think people understand and appreciate the voice they have now. At some fundamental level, I think most people believe in their fellow people too.

As long as our governments respect people’s right to express themselves, as long as our platforms live up to their responsibilities to support expression and prevent harm, and as long as we all commit to being open and making space for more perspectives, I think we’ll make progress. It’ll take time, but we’ll work through this moment. We overcame deep polarization after World War I, and intense political violence in the 1960s. Progress isn’t linear. Sometimes we take two steps forward and one step back. But if we can’t agree to let each other talk about the issues, we can’t take the first step. Even when it’s hard, this is how we build a shared understanding.

So yes, we have big disagreements. Maybe more now than at any time in recent history. But part of that is because we’re getting our issues out on the table — issues that for a long time weren’t talked about. More people from more parts of our society have a voice than ever before, and it will take time to hear these voices and knit them together into a coherent narrative. Sometimes we hope for a singular event to resolve these conflicts, but that’s never been how it works. We focus on the major institutions — from governments to large companies — but the bigger story has always been regular people using their voice to take billions of individual steps forward to make our lives and our communities better.

The future depends on all of us. Whether you like Facebook or not, we need to recognize what is at stake and come together to stand for free expression at this critical moment.

I believe in giving people a voice because, at the end of the day, I believe in people. And as long as enough of us keep fighting for this, I believe that more people’s voices will eventually help us work through these issues together and write a new chapter in our history — where from all of our individual voices and perspectives, we can bring the world closer together.

University News
Faculty & Research
Health & Medicine
Science & Technology
Social Sciences
Humanities & Arts
Students & Alumni
Arts & Culture
Sports & Athletics
The Professions
International
New England Guide

The Magazine

Current Issue
Past Issues

Class Notes & Obituaries

Browse Class Notes
Browse Obituaries

Collections

Commencement
The Context
Harvard Squared
Harvard in the Headlines

Support Harvard Magazine

Why We Need Your Support
How We Are Funded
Ways to Support the Magazine
Special Gifts
Behind the Scenes

Classifieds

Vacation Rentals & Travel
Real Estate
Products & Services
Harvard Authors’ Bookshelf
Education & Enrichment Resource
Ad Prices & Information
Place An Ad

Follow Harvard Magazine:

Commencement | 5.25.2017

“This Is a Battle of Ideas”

Mark zuckerberg and drew faust, on freedom of speech and creating “a sense of purpose for everyone”.

Mark Zuckerberg Photograph by Jim Harrison

Drew Faust Photograph by Jim Harrison

Attendance at the afternoon portion of Harvard’s 366th Commencement Day was thinner than usual, thanks to bad weather and live-streaming. Puddles formed on the empty chairs. The plastic cups of beer from the Yard’s refreshments tent ran over with spring rain. A typical, plaintive exchange: “Do you think it’s dry there?” “I don’t think it’s dry anywhere.” But still, intrepid graduates, friends, and family members determined to clap actual eyes on the featured speakers gathered in Tercentenary Theatre. They swathed themselves in plastic ponchos. High heels bored holes in the sod. One young man taking shelter under the awning of Widener Library had a plan: “I’m going to go to the front when Zuck gets here.”

Setting a tone for the event, Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, a newly minted Doctor of Laws, had days earlier live-streamed a visit to his former Kirkland House suite. “This is literally where I sat,” he told the (virtual) audience, his phone panning to take it in. “This is where I programmed Facebook.” And it looked just the same, he declared, “minus the poster in the background [for the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off ]. That’s not my poster.” But the House was slated for renovations. He’d never see it like this again. What did he have to say to that?

“If there’s one thing about Harvard, they’re very confident about getting rid of old relics, because they know they’re always going to be making new history,” he said, with an assurance almost divine. “That’s the amazing thing about Harvard. There aren’t that many institutions in the world that can be that confident that, going forward, there’s going to be so much awesome stuff happening here.”

But if anyone sensed an incongruity between the pomp surrounding the continuity of old traditions, and the young tech titan’s relentlessly forward-looking view, this afternoon flooded it with festive spirit and school pride.

Faust on Freedom of Speech

If at prior Commencement and Convocation addresses President Faust stumped for free inquiry in broad terms, this afternoon she homed in on free speech. There were dangers to “silencing ideas and basking in intellectual orthodoxy,” she admonished. “We can see here at Harvard how our inattentiveness to the power and appeal of conservative voices left much of our community astonished—blindsided by the outcome of last fall’s election.”

Still, campus conflicts about free speech principles “are hardly new,” she added, citing how in 1939 the Corporation canceled a campus appearance by the head of the American Communist Party, and in 1940 came to stalemate over the controversial appointment of philosopher Bertrand Russell. What has changed, she said, is the demographic makeup of campus. “Many of our students struggle to feel full members of this community—a community in which people like them have so recently arrived.”

While expressing sympathy for these students, Faust maintained that their courage—including the willingness to face insult—was necessary for open debate:

The price of our commitment to freedom of speech is paid disproportionately by these students. For them, free speech has not infrequently included enduring a questioning of their abilities, their humanity, their morality—their very legitimacy here. Our values and our theory of education rest on the assumption that members of our community will take the risk of speaking and will actively compete in our wild rumpus of argument and ideas. It requires them as well to be fearless in face of argument or challenge or even verbal insult. And it expects that fearlessness even when the challenge is directed to the very identity—race, religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality—that may have made them uncertain about their right to be here in the first place. Demonstrating such fearlessness is hard; no one should be mocked as a snowflake for finding it so. Hard, but important and attainable.

The president went on to frame free speech as a value that needs cultivation, not just defense:

Free speech doesn’t just happen and require intervention when it is impeded. It is not about the freedom to outshout others while everyone has their fingers in their ears. For free speech to flourish, we must build an environment where everyone takes responsibility for the right not just to speak—but to hear and be heard, where everyone assumes the responsibility to treat others with dignity and respect. It requires not just speakers, but in the words of James Ryan, dean of our Graduate School of Education, generous listeners. Amidst the current soul searching about free speech, we need to devote more attention to establishing the conditions in which everyone’s speech is encouraged and taken seriously. Ensuring freedom of speech is not just about allowing speech. It is about actively creating a community where everyone can contribute and flourish, a community where argument is relished, not feared. Freedom of speech is not just freedom from censorship; it is freedom to actively join the debate as a full participant. It is about creating a context in which genuine debate can happen.

Faust is not the only one seeking to clear the air on this topic. Deep within The Harvard Crimson’s special Commencement issue, the editorial board worked through their own definition of free speech as it pertains to campus protest, invited speakers, and discussions within the student body. “To preserve and protect free speech requires effort and care,” the article concluded . “To cultivate rich and educational discourse demands still more consideration. It is up to the members of this community—Harvard’s students, faculty, administrators, staff, and alumni—to work to build the conditions that will encourage thoughtful and productive conversations in pursuit of truth.”

Read President Faust’s full text here.

“Everyone has a sense of purpose”

Zipping ‘round a NASCAR track, dropping by a family beef farm, stopping at a Ford plant outside Detroit: Mark Zuckerberg has come to look for America. Whatever’s said by the media (or in unsealed court filings ), the Facebook co-founder and CEO has insisted that his 50-state tour isn’t just a prelude to a run for elected office. This latest leg of the trip went from Mount Katahdin and a shut-down paper mill in Millinocket, Maine, all the way down memory lane, as he and his wife, Priscilla Chan ’07, returned to old haunts in the Boston area: his favorite pizza joint; her old high school. Final destination: Harvard, for his Commencement address and honorary degree, and her tenth reunion.

Michigan must seem like a dream to him now. But snippets of that experience made it into his speech to Harvard graduates, as he charged them to create a world where, he said, “Everyone has a sense of purpose”:

When our parents graduated, that sense of purpose reliably came from your job, your church, your community, but today, technology and automation are eliminating many jobs. Membership in a lot of communities has been declining, and a lot of people are feeling disconnected and depressed, and are trying to fill a void in their lives. As I've traveled around, I've sat with children in juvenile detention and opioid addicts who told me that maybe their lives would have turned out differently if they just had something to do—an after-school program, or somewhere to go. I met factory workers who know their old jobs aren't coming back, and are just trying to find their paths ahead. For our society to keep moving forward, we have a generational challenge. To not only create new jobs, but to create a renewed sense of purpose.

He offered three ways that the new graduates’ generation could approach this. The first was to take on “big, meaningful projects,” and in doing so, to be unafraid of uncertainty or making mistakes. "Anyone taking on a complex problem is going to get blamed for not fully understanding it, even though it's impossible to know everything up front,” he advised the audience. “Anyone taking initiative will always get criticized for moving too fast, because there's always someone who wants to slow you down."

Zuckerberg also had some suggestions for possible projects. “How about stopping climate change before we destroy the planet, and getting millions of people involved in manufacturing and installing solar panels? How about curing all diseases, and getting people involved by asking volunteers to share their health data, crack their health data, and share their genomes?” he continued, warming to his theme. “You know, today, our society spends more than 50 times treating people who are sick as we invest in finding cures so that people don't get sick in the first place! That makes no sense! We can fix this! How about modernizing democracy so that everyone can vote online? And how about personalizing education so that everyone can learn?”

Then came his second idea: redefining equality, giving people enough security so that they can pursue their purpose. "It is time for our generation to define a new social contract," Zuckerberg said:

We should have a society that measures progress not just by economic measures like GDP, but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure that everyone has a cushion to find new ideas. We’re all going to change jobs and roles every time, so we need affordable childcare to get to work, and healthcare that's not tied to just one employer. And we’re all going to make mistakes, so we need a society that’s less focused on locking us up and stigmatizing us when we do. And as our technology keeps on evolving, we need a society that is more focused on providing continuous education through our lives.

But, he added, “Purpose doesn't only come from work. The third way we can create a sense of purpose for everyone is by building community. And in our generation, when we say everyone, we mean everyone in the world.…This is the struggle of our time: the forces of freedom, openness, and global community against the forces of authoritarianism, isolationism, and nationalism, forces that forward the flow of knowledge, trade, and immigration against those who would slow them down. This is not a battle of nations. This is a battle of ideas.”

Though this era’s greatest challenges require global solutions, said Zuckerberg, that in turn requires local action: building community, and giving money and time. In his case, this came in the form of teaching an after-school class on entrepreneurship at a local Boys and Girls Club. He choked up as he described one of those students, who is undocumented:

Here is a young guy who has every reason to be cynical. He wasn’t sure if the country he calls home, the only one he’s known, was going to deny him his dream of going to college. But he wasn’t feeling sorry for himself. He wasn’t even thinking of himself. He has a greater sense of purpose, and he is going to bring people along with him. It says something about our situation today that I can’t even say his name, because I don’t want to put him at risk. But if a high-school senior who doesn’t know what the future holds for him can do his part to move the world forward, then we owe it to the world to do our part, too.

Read Mark Zuckerberg’s full text here.

The Annual Meeting

Afternoon exercises are officially the annual meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA). Before the two main addresses, HAA president Marty Grasso ’78 announced his successor, Susan Morris Novick ’85, as well as the results of the elections for the HAA board of directors and Harvard’s Board of Overseers.

President Drew Faust also presented three Harvard Medals , which honor extraordinary service to the University, to longtime HAA volunteer and Crimson athletic memorabilia curator Warren Masters “Renny” Little ’55; former adviser to multiple Harvard presidents A. Clayton Spencer, A.M. ’82; and architect Henry N. Cobb ’47, M.Arch. ’49, a former professor and department chair at the Graduate School of Design.

Drew Gilpin Faust in robes at the podium in Sanders Theater

The “Dangers and Duties that Lie Ahead”

Drew Giplin Faust and Tracy K. Smith at the Phi Beta Kappa Exercises

A Dazzling Class of Zebras

The Harvard class of 2024 baccalaureate

Loeb House, where Harvard’s governing boards meet

Overseer and HAA Director Members Elected

Harvard announces the results of the annual balloting.

Most popular

Rows of chairs set up in Tercentenary Theatre with tented stage in the distance

Class Day Speakers Announced

Admissions dean William Fitzsimmons ’67 and Currier House security guard Bill Oliverio to address Harvard class of 2024

More to explore

Bernini’s Model Masterpieces at the Harvard Art Museums

Thirteen sculptures from Gian Lorenzo Bernini at Harvard Art Museums.

Illustration of a bedridden patient having chunks of the bed removed

Private Equity in Medicine and the Quality of Care

Hundreds of U.S. hospitals are owned by private equity firms—does monetizing medicine affect the quality of care?

Harvard police officer Steven Fumicello poses with black Labrador retriever Sasha.

John Harvard's Journal

Sasha the Harvard Police Dog

Sasha, the police dog of Harvard University.

The Inventory

Support Quartz

Fund next-gen business journalism with $10 a month

Free Newsletters

Mark Zuckerberg’s full commencement address at Harvard, the school he left to start Facebook

Facebook CEO—and Harvard dropout who isn’t doing too badly for himself—Mark Zuckerberg delivered the commencement address at his alma mater Thursday (May 25). Speaking to the class of 2017, Zuckerberg followed in the footsteps of fellow dropout-turned-billionaire Bill Gates by first acknowledging the irony of the situation.

“I’m an unlikely speaker, not just because I dropped out, but because we’re technically in the same generation,” he said to the crowd of rain-soaked millennials.

Zuckerberg has drawn attention to this speech over the past few months by sharing videos that highlight his memories of Harvard. The speech was also streamed live from Zuckerberg’s Facebook account .

[protected-iframe id=”40a6516a026d6990b0b8f187b765cfb0-39587363-111151947″ info=”https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fzuck%2Fvideos%2F10103748609129051%2F&show_text=0&width=560″ width=”560″ height=”315″ frameborder=”0″ style=”border: none; overflow: hidden;” scrolling=”no”]

Here are the full remarks of his speech (as prepared):

President Faust, Board of Overseers, faculty, alumni, friends, proud parents, members of the ad board, and graduates of the greatest university in the world. I’m honored to be with you today because, let’s face it, you accomplished something I never could. If I get through this speech, it’ll be the first time I actually finish something at Harvard. Class of 2017, congratulations!

But first, the last couple of days have brought back a lot of good memories.

What about your first lecture at Harvard? Mine was Computer Science 121 with the incredible Harry Lewis. I was late so I threw on a t-shirt and didn’t realize until afterwards it was inside out and backwards with my tag sticking out the front. I couldn’t figure out why no one would talk to me—except one guy, KX Jin, he just went with it. We ended up doing our problem sets together, and now he runs a big part of Facebook. And that, Class of 2017, is why you should be nice to people.

But my best memory from Harvard was meeting Priscilla. I had just launched this prank website Facemash, and the ad board wanted to “see me”. Everyone thought I was going to get kicked out. My parents came to help me pack. My friends threw me a going-away party. As luck would have it, Priscilla was at that party with her friend. We met in line for the bathroom in the Pfoho Belltower, and in what must be one of the all-time romantic lines, I said: “I’m going to get kicked out in three days, so we need to go on a date quickly.”

Actually, any of you graduating can use that line.

I didn’t end up getting kicked out—I did that to myself. Priscilla and I started dating. And, you know, that movie made it seem like Facemash was so important to creating Facebook. It wasn’t. But without Facemash I wouldn’t have met Priscilla, and she’s the most important person in my life, so you could say it was the most important thing I built in my time here.

We’ve all started lifelong friendships here, and some of us even families. That’s why I’m so grateful to this place. Thanks, Harvard.

One of my favorite stories is when John F. Kennedy visited the NASA space center, he saw a janitor carrying a broom and he walked over and asked what he was doing. The janitor responded: “Mr. President, I’m helping put a man on the moon.”

Purpose is that sense that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that we are needed, that we have something better ahead to work for. Purpose is what creates true happiness.

As I’ve traveled around, I’ve sat with children in juvenile detention and opioid addicts, who told me their lives could have turned out differently if they just had something to do, an after-school program or somewhere to go. I’ve met factory workers who know their old jobs aren’t coming back and are trying to find their place.

To keep our society moving forward, we have a generational challenge—to not only create new jobs, but create a renewed sense of purpose.

The thing is, it never even occurred to me that someone might be us. We were just college kids. We didn’t know anything about that. There were all these big technology companies with resources. I just assumed one of them would do it. But this idea was so clear to us—that all people want to connect. So we just kept moving forward, day by day.

I know a lot of you will have your own stories just like this. A change in the world that seems so clear you’re sure someone else will do it. But they won’t. You will.

But it’s not enough to have purpose yourself. You have to create a sense of purpose for others. I found that out the hard way. You see, my hope was never to build a company, but to make an impact. And as all these people started joining us, I just assumed that’s what they cared about too, so I never explained what I hoped we’d build.

Now, years later, I understand that is how things work with no sense of higher purpose. It’s up to us to create it so we can all keep moving forward together.

First, let’s take on big meaningful projects.

Our generation will have to deal with tens of millions of jobs replaced by automation like self-driving cars and trucks. But we have the potential to do so much more together.

Every generation has its defining works. More than 300,000 people worked to put a man on the moon—including that janitor. Millions of volunteers immunized children around the world against polio. Millions of more people built the Hoover Dam and other great projects.

These projects didn’t just provide purpose for the people doing those jobs, they gave our whole country a sense of pride that we could do great things.

Now it’s our turn to do great things. I know, you’re probably thinking: I don’t know how to build a dam, or get a million people involved in anything.

But let me tell you a secret: No one does when they begin. Ideas don’t come out fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started.

If I had to understand everything about connecting people before I began, I never would have started Facebook.

Oh, you know what else movies get wrong about innovation? No one writes math formulas on glass. That’s not a thing.

So what are we waiting for? It’s time for our generation-defining public works. How about stopping climate change before we destroy the planet, and getting millions of people involved manufacturing and installing solar panels? How about curing all diseases and asking volunteers to track their health data and share their genomes? Today we spend 50x more treating people who are sick than we spend finding cures so people don’t get sick in the first place. That makes no sense. We can fix this. How about modernizing democracy so everyone can vote online, and personalizing education so everyone can learn?

These achievements are within our reach. Let’s do them all in a way that gives everyone in our society a role. Let’s do big things, not only to create progress, but to create purpose. So taking on big meaningful projects is the first thing we can do to create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.

The second is redefining equality to give everyone the freedom they need to pursue purpose. Many of our parents had stable jobs throughout their careers. Now we’re all entrepreneurial, whether we’re starting projects or finding or role. And that’s great. Our culture of entrepreneurship is how we create so much progress.

Now, an entrepreneurial culture thrives when it’s easy to try lots of new ideas. Facebook wasn’t the first thing I built. I also built games, chat systems, study tools and music players. I’m not alone. JK Rowling got rejected 12 times before publishing Harry Potter . Even Beyonce had to make hundreds of songs to get “Halo.” The greatest successes come from having the freedom to fail.

We should have a society that measures progress not just by economic metrics like GDP, but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things. We’re going to change jobs many times, so we need affordable child care to get to work and health care that aren’t tied to one company. We’re all going to make mistakes, so we need a society that focuses less on locking us up or stigmatizing us. And as technology keeps changing, we need to focus more on continuous education throughout our lives.

And yes, giving everyone the freedom to pursue purpose isn’t free. People like me should pay for it. Many of you will do well and you should too.

Millennials are already one of the most charitable generations in history. In one year, three of four US millennials made a donation and seven out of ten raised money for charity.

But it’s not just about money. You can also give time. I promise you, if you take an hour or two a week—that’s all it takes to give someone a hand, to help them reach their potential.

Maybe you think that’s too much time. I used to. When Priscilla graduated from Harvard she became a teacher, and before she’d do education work with me, she told me I needed to teach a class. I complained: “Well, I’m kind of busy. I’m running this company.” But she insisted, so I taught a middle-school program on entrepreneurship at the local Boys and Girls Club.

We can all make time to give someone a hand. Let’s give everyone the freedom to pursue their purpose—not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because when more people can turn their dreams into something great, we’re all better for it.

Purpose doesn’t only come from work. The third way we can create a sense of purpose for everyone is by building community. And when our generation says “everyone,” we mean everyone in the world.

Quick show of hands: How many of you are from another country? Now, how many of you are friends with one of these folks? Now we’re talking. We have grown up connected.

In a survey asking millennials around the world what defines our identity, the most popular answer wasn’t nationality, religion or ethnicity, it was “citizen of the world”. That’s a big deal. Every generation expands the circle of people we consider “one of us.” For us, it now encompasses the entire world.

We understand the great arc of human history bends towards people coming together in ever greater numbers—from tribes to cities to nations—to achieve things we couldn’t on our own.

We get that our greatest opportunities are now global—we can be the generation that ends poverty, that ends disease. We get that our greatest challenges need global responses too—no country can fight climate change alone or prevent pandemics. Progress now requires coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community.

This is the struggle of our time. The forces of freedom, openness and global community against the forces of authoritarianism, isolationism, and nationalism. Forces for the flow of knowledge, trade and immigration against those who would slow them down. This is not a battle of nations, it’s a battle of ideas. There are people in every country for global connection and good people against it.

That’s why it’s so striking that for decades, membership in all kinds of groups has declined as much as one-quarter. That’s a lot of people who now need to find purpose somewhere else.

But I know we can rebuild our communities and start new ones because many of you already are.

I met Agnes Igoye, who’s graduating today. Where are you, Agnes? She spent her childhood navigating conflict zones in Uganda, and now she trains thousands of law-enforcement officers to keep communities safe.

I met Kayla Oakley and Niha Jain, graduating today, too. Stand up. Kayla and Niha started a nonprofit that connects people suffering from illnesses with people in their communities willing to help.

This is my story too. A student in a dorm room, connecting one community at a time, and keeping at it until one day we connect the whole world.

Change starts local. Even global changes start small—with people like us. In our generation, the struggle of whether we connect more, whether we achieve our biggest opportunities, comes down to this—your ability to build communities and create a world where every single person has a sense of purpose.

Class of 2017, you are graduating into a world that needs purpose. It’s up to you to create it. Now, you may be thinking: Can I really do this?

Last year I took him out to breakfast for his birthday. I wanted to get him a present, so I asked him and he started talking about students he saw struggling and said, “You know, I’d really just like a book on social justice.”

I was blown away. Here’s a young guy who has every reason to be cynical. He didn’t know if the country he calls home—the only one he’s known—would deny him his dream of going to college. But he wasn’t feeling sorry for himself. He wasn’t even thinking of himself. He has a greater sense of purpose, and he’s going to bring people along with him.

It says something about our current situation that I can’t even say his name because I don’t want to put him at risk. But if a high-school senior who doesn’t know what the future holds can do his part to move the world forward, then we owe it to the world to do our part too.

Before you walk out those gates one last time, as we sit in front of Memorial Church, I am reminded of a prayer, Mi Shebeirach , that I say whenever I face a challenge, that I sing to my daughter thinking about her future when I tuck her into bed. It goes:”May the source of strength, who blessed the ones before us, help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing.”

I hope you find the courage to make your life a blessing.

Congratulations, Class of ’17! Good luck out there.

📬 Sign up for the Daily Brief

Our free, fast, and fun briefing on the global economy, delivered every weekday morning.

Big Fish Presentations Designing and delivering experiences through Presentation Design, Presentation Training, and Video Production.

The big fish blog, 5 lessons from zuckerberg’s harvard commencement speech.

Mark Zuckerberg faced a greater challenge than defining the big idea for the Harvard Class of 2017 commencement speech. As an icon of the millennial generation, of the internet, and of connecting the world, Zuckerberg’s celebrity status, wealth, and various rumors and myths precede him, threatening to overshadow anything he says. Before building his big idea, Zuckerberg had to connect with his audience to really grab their attention.

Zuckerberg successfully positions himself alongside the graduates before challenging them to make their world a better place. Through story, reflection, and humorous and sentimental anecdotes, Zuckerberg tells a story that builds trust and intimacy. Surrounded by men in top hats, addressing an audience in rain ponchos, others dripping wet, his approach not only allows his message to be clear, but exemplifies his big idea: “…finding your purpose isn’t enough. The challenge for our generation is creating a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.”

Here we breakdown the top strengths of Zuckerberg’s Harvard commencement address and give our takeaways and tips that can be applied to anyone’s speech, commencement or otherwise.

1. Break the Tension

“If I get through this speech, it’ll be the first time I actually finish something at Harvard.”

Speeches can be awkward. If you’re addressing an audience of graduates, chances are they are much younger than you. Or, if you’re anything like Mark Zuckerberg, they already know a few of your stories. The old standby is to start with a joke, but subtlety is key. While Zuckerberg was never kicked out of Harvard, he did get into trouble due to a drunken prank, which you can still read about on The Harvard Crimson . To acknowledge the tension, he greets the audience, graduates, and members of the “ad board,” the group of people who could have ended his career at Harvard many years before, but with whom he is now sharing the stage. That simple nod to the board carries many layers: the early beginnings of his notoriety, mistakes of his past, and showing that he was once a student who had to follow the rules. Rather than telling a story with a punchline, the joke is implied. Breaking the tension doesn’t mean starting with a bang.

If there’s an elephant in the room, acknowledge it.

Use subtle humor to break the tension.

2. Build a Personal Connection

“This is my story too. A student in a dorm room, connecting one community at a time, and keeping at it until one day we connect the whole world.”

You may already have a connection with your audience, but the more personal you can make that connection, the more willing your audience is to hear your message. To build a connection with the graduates, Zuckerberg says, “I’m an unlikely speaker, not just because I dropped out, but because we’re technically in the same generation. We walked this yard less than a decade apart, studied the same ideas and slept through the same Ec10 lectures.” Zuckerberg not only establishes that he is more like the graduates than not, he situates his path with theirs. As he names dormitories, specific classes, and Harvard hangouts, he develops a sense of community. But having inhabited the same spaces is a superficial connection.

It’s not enough to say you are the same, you have to prove it. Anecdotes give people something to see in themselves. Zuckerberg says, “We’ve all started lifelong friendships here, and some of us even families,” which leads to two anecdotes that situate him as someone with humble beginnings. He recalls meeting his first friend at Harvard: “I was late so I threw on a t-shirt and didn’t realize until afterwards it was inside out and backwards with my tag sticking out the front. I couldn’t figure out why no one would talk to me — except one guy, KX Jin, he just went with it.” That guy now runs part of Facebook. And to bring everything full circle, Zuckerberg admits how that prank that brought him in front of the ad board lead to meeting his wife: “But without Facemash I wouldn’t have met Priscilla, and she’s the most important person in my life, so you could say it was the most important thing I built in my time here.” The audience may not be able to identify with these exact situations, but the stories humanize the person at the podium.

The more personal the connection, showing that you are on the same side, the more impact your speech will have.

Know where your life and your audience intersect.

Tell anecdotes that highlight your experiences the audience can identify with.

3. Share the Journey, Not Just Milestones

“The greatest successes come from having the freedom to fail.”

Audiences, especially graduates, don’t want a list of accomplishments, they want advice, and more importantly, they want to know it’s okay to trip over their next few steps. As Zuckerberg says, “The idea of a single eureka moment is a dangerous lie. It makes us feel inadequate since we haven’t had ours. It prevents people with seeds of good ideas from getting started.” “If [Zuckerberg] had to understand everything about connecting people before [he] began, [he] never would have started Facebook.” The purpose of your speech is to inspire and call people to action, so glossing over the steps you’ve taken to get to where you are won’t do them any good. A good strategy to empower others is through sharing your own experiences.

Your path to success is likely why you were asked to speak in the first place. Zuckerberg provides another anecdote from the early days of his company: “You see, my hope was never to build a company, but to make an impact. And as all these people started joining us, I just assumed that’s what they cared about too, so I never explained what I hoped we’d build…Nearly everyone else wanted to sell. Without a sense of higher purpose, this was the startup dream come true. It tore our company apart… And worse, it was my fault.” This is a story that many people probably already know, but Zuckerberg underscores it with personal responsibility. Without knowing the journey, your accomplishment is meaningless to your audience. Share your failures and successes.

People assume you’re just lucky; show them that all journeys have potholes and peaks.

Reflect on misguided ideas of success and reposition the audience’s beliefs.

4. You Are The Big Idea

“But it’s not enough to have purpose yourself. You have to create a sense of purpose for others.”

Once you’ve made a connection, won the audience’s empathy and trust, you can hit them with the challenge. The big idea is just that, the most important part of your speech. Zuckerberg leveled himself with the audience and knows they have potential to have an impact on the future of our world. So he delivers his challenge: “Today I want to talk about three ways to create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose: by taking on big meaningful projects together, by redefining equality so everyone has the freedom to pursue purpose, and by building community across the world.” It’s the big idea of big ideas, but he breaks it down in specific, attainable goals. And, again, he provides anecdotes: “One of my favorite stories is when John F Kennedy visited the NASA space center, he saw a janitor carrying a broom and he walked over and asked what he was doing. The janitor responded: ‘Mr. President, I’m helping put a man on the moon’.” This aligns his big idea with an accomplishment that is not only universally known, but is shared by everyone in America. The fact we were the first country to reach the moon, no matter how long ago it happened, is a national accomplishment. But it also illustrates that creating a sense of purpose for others is not as impossible as it may seem.

The other side of the challenge is proving that you are not passing the baton. Your words are just words until you support them with actions. Zuckerberg says, “And yes, giving everyone the freedom to pursue purpose isn’t free. People like me should pay for it. Many of you will do well and you should too.” This is maybe his loftiest call, since he is one of the wealthiest people in the world, but he doesn’t just talk about money. He provides another possibility, which is giving someone else your time: “I promise you, if you take an hour or two a week — that’s all it takes to give someone a hand, to help them reach their potential.” Part of a good speech is predicting the objections, and someone is sure to point out that Zuckerberg has a lot of money to give, but his time is probably much more valuable. Everyone’s is. Again he tells a story, this time about a group of young people he’s had dinner with once a month for the past five years, and how his time has affected their lives and their sense of purpose. People won’t just do what you tell them to, so lead by example.

The big idea is the most important part of the speech, but it won’t land if you don’t build yourself around it.

Anticipate objections and address them in your story.

Don’t challenge someone to do what you haven’t done or aren’t willing to do.

5. Emotional Resonance

“I hope you find the courage to make your life a blessing.”

All speeches must come to an end, hopefully. And after thirty minutes or so, you will probably lose your audience’s attention here and there. Your ending must be as memorable as the beginning. To intensify his message, Zuckerberg employs every strategy that makes his speech successful: personal connection, anecdotes, and big idea to tell another story. He tells the story of an undocumented young man, raised in the U.S., who “didn’t know if the country he calls home — the only one he’s known — would deny him his dream of going to college.” At this point, Zuckerberg has laid out his plan, the challenge, but here he lets his guard down and shows vulnerability. For his birthday, the young man asked for a book on social justice. He just wanted to learn more about what he could do to help others like him. Zuckerberg says, “But if a high school senior who doesn’t know what the future holds can do his part to move the world forward, then we owe it to the world to do our part too.” Throughout his speech, Zuckerberg paused for poignant moments of applause, but he held the longest here. Knowing when to save the big applause, like the climax of a movie, is important. If you can weave an emotional response in with your call to action, your audience can’t forget your big idea.

Leave a lasting impression by evoking an emotional response.

Anecdotes, anecdotes, anecdotes. Life experiences make the big idea all the more real.

While few people are as notorious as Mark Zuckerberg, and not everyone can tell the kinds of stories he has experienced, what Zuckerberg does well is evident: he understands his audience and the purpose of his speech. Graduates are excited about their big day. They’ve worked many years to get there, so the commencement speech can be just another lecture they have to sit through. Zuckerberg’s careful strategy of making a personal connection through story demands the audience’s attention, and emphasizes why his message is important enough to be heard. Watch the full speech here .

Although graduation commencements don’t come around too often, the lessons covered can be applied to any speech. Do you have any favorite commencement speeches? Let us know in the comments! And don’t forget to subscribe to our blog to keep posted for our future writings on all things presentations.

Written by: Dusty Cooper

Tags: big fish presentations , inspiration , public speaking

Share your opinion. Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

Subscribe to Big Fish’s Blog

Want to stay up-to-date with us? Subscribe and you'll know every time we have a new post. You'll also get our monthly newsletter AND a free copy of our eBook "The Building of Stories," because we're just so nice.

Name First Last
Name This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Big Fish News (21)
Casual Fridays (6)
Entrepreneurship (13)
Guest Posts (5)
Presentation Breakdowns (80)
Presentation Design (11)
Presentation Theory (33)
Public Speaking (31)
Sample Chapters (5)
SlideShare (7)
Uncategorized (6)
Videos (11)

Follow Big Fish

WE WROTE A BOOK!

In it, you’ll find our step-by-step techniques, the best tips on new presentation tools, innovative ways to deliver your ideas, case studies of presentations, as well as ways to recover if things go wrong.

Where's the best place to send your

Free storytelling ebook, yolo design is now, new name, same awesome team.

Five years ago YOLO Design started out as a small passion project between friends. We've come a long way since then - learning, growing, and rising to challenges every step of the way. We've rebranded to celebrate our growth as a company. Read more about it on our new blog , or go straight to the awesome new site .

We are happy to announce that we are now part of the ThreeSixtyEight family. Our shop has joined forces with Hatchit Co to launch a full service digital experience agency that challenges brands to embrace their creative confidence through web, video, and digital brand strategy. Come over and say hello! If you’re just looking for presentation services though, please just exit out this box and continue along. Our team is always happy in helping you deliver an experience.

The A.V. Club
That Takeout
The Inventory

Spot Zuckerberg’s full commencement address the Hereward, the instruct he left to start Visit

On CEO—and Harvard dropout who isn’t doing talk badly for himself—Mark Zuckerberg delivered the commencement address at his alma mater Thursday (May 25). Speaking to of your of 2017, Zuckerberg followed is the footsteps of fellow dropout-turned-billionaire Bill Gates in first confess the irony of one situation.

“I’m an unlikely loudspeaker, non just since I dropped outbound, but because we’re technically in the same generation,” he said to the crowd of rain-soaked millennials. Mark Zuckerberg’s full commencement address at Harvard, the go he left to start Facebook

Zuckerberg has drawn attention to this speech over the past few months by sharing videos that show his memories of Harvard. An talking was also streamed live from Zuckerberg’s Share account .

Here are the full remarks of him speech (as prepared):

President Faust, Board of Overseers, faculty, absolventinnen, friends, proud parents, members of who ad board, and graduates of who greatest university in the world. I’m honored in be with you today because, let’s face she, you accomplished something I never could. If I get through this speak, it’ll be the first time IODIN actually finish something at Havard. Class of 2017, congratulations!

I’m an likely speaker, cannot right because I dropped out, but because we’re technically in the same generation. We walked this yard less than a octave apart, studied the same beliefs both slept through this same Ec10 lectures. We may do taken different paths to get here, especially if her came all the way from the Quad, but today I want to share what I’ve learned about their generation and one world we’re building together.

But first, that last couple of days have introduced back a lot of good memo.

How plenty regarding you remember exactly what you were doing if you acquired that email telling you that you got on Harvard? IODIN is playing Level and MYSELF was downstairs, got my dad, real for some reason, sein reacting was to video me opening the receive. That could have past a really sad video. I swear getting into Harvard will still the dish my parents will greatest proud of ich for.

What about your first-time lecture the Harvard? Me is Computer Science 121 for the incredible Harry Lewis. I was late so I threw on a t-shirt and didn’t realize for afterwards it was inside out and backwards with my tag sticking out the front. I couldn’t frame out reason no individual would voice to me—except single guy, KX Jin, i equitable went because it. We ended back doing our problem sets together, plus now he runs one big part of Facebook. And that, Sort of 2017, is why it should be nice go people. Top-Down Influential? Predicting CEO Personality plus Risk Collision since Speaking Transcripts

But mys best memory from Harvard was meeting Priscilla. I was just launched this prank website Facemash, and the ad board wanted to “see me”. Everyone thought EGO was going to get kicked out. Mine people came to help me pack. My friends threw mee a going-away parties. As fate would have it, Priscilla has with the gang with her friend. We met within line for the bathroom in the Pfoho Belltower, and in what must be one of the all-time romanticist lines, I said: “I’m going to get step leave in three days, how we needs to go on a date quickly.” Dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, a heated welcome including from my side. Although I wish that we could have greeted each other in person, I am ...

Actually, any of you graduating can use that line.

I didn’t exit raise acquiring kicked out—I did that to myself. Priscilla and IODIN started dating. Real, you get, that movie made it seeming like Facemash was so important to creating Social. It wasn’t. But without Facemash I wouldn’t have gemischt Priescilla, and she’s the most important character in my life, so thou could say it was the most important thing ME built in my total here.

We’ve all started lifelong mates here, and einigen of us even families. That’s mystery I’m so grateful to this space. Thanks, Harvard.

Today I want to talk about purpose. But I’m not here to give you this standard commencement about discover your purpose. We’re millennials. We’ll try to what that instinctively. Instead, I’m here to tell you how your purpose isn’t enough. The challenge in our generation is creating a around where each has a sense of purpose. How much does one CEO's personality impact of performance of their company? Management theorizing posits a great manipulation, but items remains difficult on show empirically -- there is a lack of publicly...

One of my favorite stories is when John F. Kenner visited the NASA space center, he saw a maintenance carrying one broom and he came about the asked what he was doing. That janitor responded: “Mr. Head, I’m helping put a man with the moon.” Satya Nadella: (00:02) Good middle and welcome to Build. We're living taken extraordinary times. I want to first-time extend my low sympathies go view who hold

Purpose a the sense that we are part of existence more than oneself, that we are needed, that we have existence beter ahead to labor for. Purpose is what engenders true happiness. CEO Annual General meeting speech

You’re graduating at a time when this a especially important. When our parents graduated, purpose durable came from your job, my church, your community. But today, technology additionally automation are eradicating many jobs. Membership in communities is declining. Many people feel disconnected and depressed, and have trying to fill a void.

As I’ve traveled around, I’ve sat with children in juvenile detention and opioid addicts, who told in their lives could have spun out differently if they just had something to do, an after-school program or somewhere to go. I’ve met factory workers who know their old jobs aren’t coming back and are trying to find their place. Transcript: TikTok CEO Testifies to Congress

To stop our society moving forward, we has ampere generation challenge—to not only create new jobs, but create a renewing sense of purpose.

I store the night I launched Facebook from my little dorm in Kirkland My. IODIN left to Noch’s using my friend KX. EGO remember telling him I was excited to connect the Harvard community, but one day someone would unite the whole world.

The thing is, she never even arisen to me that someone might be us. We were just college kids. We didn’t perceive anything about that. There were all these big technology companies through resources. I just assumed of of them would do it. But aforementioned idea made so clear to us—that all people want for connect. So we just kept moving share, daily by sun.

I know adenine game of you will have your own stories just like this. ONE change in to world that seems to clearing you’re certain someone else will do it. But they won’t. You will. How big does a CEO's personality impact the performance of their company? Management theory items a great affect, but it will difficult to show empirically -- there is a lack of openly existing self-reported personality data concerning top managers. Instead, we request a text-based persona regressor using crowd-sourced Myers--Briggs Kind Indicator (MBTI) judgments. The ratings will a high internal and external validity and can be predicted with moderate to strong correlations since triad out regarding four dimensions. Providing evidence for the upper echelons theory, we demonstrate which this predicted CEO personalities have explanations power of fiscal risk.

But it’s not enough to have purpose yourself. You have till create a sense of purpose by others. I found that out the hard road. You see, my hopes was never to make a company, but to induce an impact. And in sum these human starting linking used, I just assuming that’s what they cared about even, so I never explained what I hoped we’d build. Leaked CEO Speech Transcript: ADENINE Modest, Improbable Proposal for Such Year’s Annual Report

A link years in, some big corporate wished in buy contact. I didn’t want to sell. I wanted to see if we could connect more people. We were builds the first News Feed, plus I thought if we could just launch this, it could change how we learn about the world.

Nearly everyone else required in sell. Without a sense of higher purpose, that was the startup dream come true. It tore our company apart. After one tense disagreement, into advisor told meine if I didn’t confirm to sell, I would regret the decision for who rest of me life. Relationships was so frayed that within a year or so every single person on to management team was gone.

That was mys hardest point leading Facebook. I believed into what we were doing, but I felt lonely. And worse, it was meine fault. I wondered if I was even wrong, and imposter, a 22 year-old kid anybody had no ideation how the world worked.

Now, years later, I appreciate this is what things work with does sense of bigger purpose. It’s upwards to usage in create i so are ca sum keeping moving forward jointly. ‘You’ve got on find what him love,’ Jobs says | Stanford Current

Today I want toward talk about three ways to create a our places anyone has a sense of purpose: by taking on big meaningful projects together, by redefines same so everyone has the freedom to pursue purpose, and by building community across the whole. Microsoft held its annual Build 2020 event virtually today. They performed several large announcements & revisions to MS products. Read CEO Satya Nadella's opening remarks dort.

First, let’s take on big meaningful projects.

Our generation will have to deal with tens of thousands of jobs replaced by automation like self-driving cars and trucks. But we have the potential at do therefore much more together. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Build 2020 Aperture Speech Transcript

Every generation has you defining work. More from 300,000 human work to lay a fellow on the moon—including that janitor. Millions away volunteers immunized children around an world against polio. Millions of more human built to Vacuum-clean Dam real misc great projects.

These projects didn’t just provide purpose for which people doing those jobs, they gave our whole country a sense by pride that our could do major things.

Now it’s our turn to do great things. I know, you’re presumably thinking: I don’t know how to build a dam, or get one million people involved in anything. Top-Down Influence? Predicting CEO Personality and Risk Impact...

But let me notify you a secret: Nay can does when they begin. Ideas don’t come out fully formed. They only become clear as you work on you. Thee just have to get launched.

If I had to understand get about connecting people before I began, I never would have beginning Facebook.

Movies and pop social get like all wrong. The idea of a single eureka moment is a dangerous lie. It makes us feel inadequate since ours haven’t must ours. Itp prevents people with seeds from good ideas from getting startup.

Oh, you know what else featured get wrong about innovation? No one writes arithmetic formulas on glass. That’s not a thing.

It’s good on be idealistic. But be prepared to be misunderstood. Anyone workings on a huge vision be get called crazy, even if you end skyward right. Anyone working on a involved problem will get blamed for does fully understanding the challenge, even nevertheless it’s impossible toward know everything upfront. Anyone capture proactive will get critizized for moving moreover fast, because there’s always any who will to slow you down.

In you society, we often don’t do big things because we’re so afraid of making unrichtigkeiten that we ignore all the things wrong right while we do nothing. The reality is, anything we do will have issues in the future. Not that can’t keep use out starting. Complete submit, movie of Apples CEO Tim Cook's EU privacy speech

So what are are waiting for? It’s time for our generation-defining public works. How about stopping environment change before we destroy the plot, and getting millions of people involved manufacturing and installing solar slabs? How about curing all diseases or asking participant to track theirs health file and share their genomes? Now we spend 50x more treating people with are sick than we spend finding cures so folks don’t get sick in the first place. That makes no sense. We can fasten this. How about modernizing democracy so all sack vote online, additionally personalizing education so everyone can learn?

These achievements are within our reach. Let’s how them all in a way that gives any in our society a role. Let’s go larger things, cannot only to create proceed, and till create purpose. So taking on big meaningful past is that first doing we can do to create a world where everyone has a sensory of target. This is a prepared text of the Outset address sent by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

Of second is redefined equality go give everyone the freedom they need to pursue purpose. Many of willingness parents had stable vacancies throughout they careers. Now we’re all entrepreneurial, whether we’re beginning projects or finding or role. And that’s amazing. Are culture of entrepreneurship your instructions we create so much progress.

Now, an entrepreneurial culture thrives if it’s easy to tries lots of fresh ideas. Facebook wasn’t the first thing I built. ME also built my, chat systems, study tools and music players. I’m not alone. JK Rowling got denied 12 times before publishing Harry Potter . Even Beyonce had to do hundreds of songs to get “Halo.” The greatest successes come of having the freedom to fail.

But today, we have a level of richness inequality that injured everyone. When you don’t have the freedom to take your idea and turn it at a important enterprise, we all lose. Correct now and society is way over-indexed for rewarding success and we don’t do nearly enough to make it easy for everyone to take lots out shots.

Let’s face it. There is anything wrong with our system when I can leave on and make billions of dollars in 10 years while millions of students can’t afford to pay out their advances, let alone start a business.

Look, MYSELF know one pitch of entrepreneurs, and I don’t know a single person anyone offered up on starting one business because they might not make enough money. But I know lots of people who haven’t pursued dreams because them didn’t have a cushion to fall back on if they fails.

We all know we don’t succeed just by having a sound conceive or working hard. We succeed by being successful too. If I should to sponsor mys family growing up instead of having total to code, if I didn’t know I’d be fine if Facebook didn’t work out, I wouldn’t be standing hierher today. If we’re genuine, we all know how much chance we’ve had.

Everybody create enlarged hers explanation of equality. Previous generations fought for the vote and civil rights. They had the Add Deal and Great Society. Now it’s our time on define adenine new social contract for our generation.

We shall have a society is measures progress cannot fairly by economy metering like GDP, but the how many of us hold a role we find meaningful. Wealth should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion into try new things. We’re going to change jobs large times, so we need accessibly children attention at get to work and health attend that aren’t tied to one company. We’re all moving to make irrtum, so we need adenine companies that focuses less on locking us upside or stigmatizing us. And as technology keeps changeover, we need to focus more on continuous education throughout our lives. Transcript: Welcome message from John Chambers, CEO - Cisco

And yes, offer everyone the freedom to pursue purpose isn’t free. People like me should pay for it. Many of you will do well and you should too.

That’s why Dr and I started the Chan Zuckerberg Action and committed our wealth to promoting equal chance. Are are the values of our generation. It was never a query is whenever wealth where going to do this. The includes question was when. Apple CEO, Tim Cook spoke up for privacy along a conference of Europen privacy commissioners in Brussels this sunrise.

Millennials are already one of the most charitable generations in history. In one year, three of four US millennials made one donation furthermore seven exit of dozen raised dollars for charity. An hearing was entitled “TikTok: How Congress Can Safeguard American Data Personal and Protect Kid from Online Harms.”

But it’s not just about money. You can also give type. I promise they, if your take an per or dual a week—that’s see this takes go give some ampere hand, to help them reach their potential.

Possibly you think that’s too much time. IODIN used to. When Priscilla graduated for Harvard she is a teacher, and before she’d do formation work because mein, your tells meier ME needed to teach a class. I complained: “Well, I’m kind of busy. I’m current such company.” But she insisted, so ME taught adenine middle-school program on entrepreneurship with the local Boys and Little Club.

I taught them lessons on product development and marketing, the they taught me where it’s like felt targeted for your race and having a family member in prison. I shared stories from my time in school, and they shared their hope of one day passing to college too. For five per now, I’ve been having dinner including those kids jede month. Sole of diehards threw me and Priscilla our first baby shower. And next time they’re going to college. Every of of them. First in their families.

We can all make set to give individual a hand. Let’s give everyone the freedom to pursue their purpose—not only because it’s the good thing to do, when because when more people can turn them dreams into something great, we’re all better for it. First on CNBC: CNBC Transcript: BlackRock Chairman & CEO Big Fink ... the world today additionally I said this in get prepared speech earlier today, ...

Purpose doesn’t only come from work. This third way we can create a sense of purpose for everyone is by building community. And when our generation says “everyone,” we mean everyone in one world.

Quick show regarding help: How more concerning to are from another country? Now, wherewith many of you are friendship with one from these folks? Start we’re talking. We have grown up connected.

Included one survey asking millennials around the world what defines our identity, the best popular answer wasn’t nationality, religion or race, it was “citizen regarding the world”. That’s a big deal. Every generation expands the circle of public we study “one by us.” For us, it now encompasses the entire world. The CEO dropped out on 2005—returned to give of start address to the class of 2017.

We understand who greater arc von human past bends towards people next together in ever greater numbers—from tribe to cities to nations—to achieve things we couldn’t on magnitude own.

We take that their greatest opportunities are now global—we ability be the generation that ends poor, that ends disease. We get that our greatest challenges need global responses too—no country cannot struggles mood change alone or prevent pandemics. Progress now requires coming together not just like cities press nations, but also as a global community.

And wealth live stylish an changeable time. There are people left behind by globalization across the world. It’s harder to care about people in other places if we don’t felling good nearly our lives here at home. There’s pressure up bend inwards.

This is the struggle of our time. The forces of freedom, openness and global community against the forces of authoritarianism, isolationism, and nationalism. Crew since the flow of understanding, trade and immigration against those which would slow them downwards. This can not a battle about nations, it’s adenine fight away creative. There are people within every country for global connection and good people against it.

This isn’t going to be decided at the UN either. It’s going to happen at the global level, when enough of us feel a sense of purpose and firmness in my own lifetimes that we can open up and start tending about everyone. The best way to do that is to start builds local communities right now.

We show get meaning from our communities. Whether our communities are houses or athletics teams, churches press music bunches, they give us that feeling we are partial of something bigger, ensure we are nay alone; they give us the strength to expand unser horizons.

That’s why it’s so striking that for decades, membership inches all kinds of groups has declined like much while one-quarter. That’s a lot of people anyone today need to find purpose somewhere else. Even on Zoom I can see the confusion in your eyes.

However MYSELF know we can rebuild our towns and start new everyone as many of you already are.

I met Agnes Igoye, who’s graduating today. Where are you, Agnes? She ausgabe her childhood navigating conflict zones include Uganda, and now wife trains thousands of law-enforcement clerical to keep groups safe. Copy: Welcome message from John Quarters, CEO. Hallo, I'm John Shelves, chairman and CEO to Cisco and I to to welcome either of you as a new hire to ...

I mett Kayla Oakley and Niha Jain, graduated today, too. Stand up. Kayla and Niha initiated one nonprofit that connects people suffering from illnesses with people in their communities willing to help.

IODIN met Davis Razu Aznar, graduating from the Kennedy Teach today. Davis, stand up. He’s a previous city councilor who efficiently led the battle to make Country City the first Latte Am city to pass marriage equality—even pre San Franciscans.

This is my story additionally. AN student in a dorm room, connecting one community at a time, and keeper at it until the day we connect which whole world.

Change starts local. Uniform universal changes start small—with human like us. In our generation, this battles of whether we connect find, whether wealth achieve our biggest opportunities, comes down till this—your ability to build populations and create a world where every single person possesses ampere sense of application.

Class of 2017, you are graduating into a world that needs function. It’s up to you to create it. Now, thee may remain thinking: Can I really do this?

Remember when I told yours about that class I taught at the Boys and Girls Join? One day after class I was talking to them about college, furthermore one of mys top apprentices raised his hand and answered he wasn’t sure he could go because he’s undocumented. Man didn’t know if they’d let him in.

Last year I took him out to breakfast for his birthday. IODIN wished to get him a present, so I asked him and he startup talking about apprentices he saw struggling and answered, “You know, I’d really just like a book on social justice.”

I was blew away. Here’s a young guy who has every reason at be cynical. He didn’t know if one heimatland male calls home—the only one he’s known—would deny him his dream of moving to college. But he wasn’t feeling sad for himself. Boy wasn’t even thinking are himself. He is a greater sense concerning purpose, and he’s going to bring my along with him.

It says something about our current place that I can’t even say his appoint because I don’t want to put him at risk. But if a high-school senior who doesn’t know get the coming holds can do his part to move the world onward, then we owe it to the world to do their part too.

Once you walk out which gateway one last time, as we seat in front of Memorial Church, ME am reminded of a prayer, Mi Shebeirach , that I say whenever I face a challenge, so EGO sing to my daughter thinking about her future when I tuck her into bed. She goes:”May the source of strengthen, who blessed one ones previously us, help used find the courage to makes in real a blessing.”

I hopes you find the courage to make your lives a blessing.

Congrats, Class of ’17! Okay luck out there.

📬 Sign up for the Daily Brief

Our free, fast, and fun briefing the the global savings, released every weekday morning.

Mark Zuckerberg’s makeover: Midlife crisis or carefully crafted rebrand?

For Mark Zuckerberg’s 40th birthday, his wife got him a photoshoot .

Zuckerberg gives the camera a sly smile as he sits amid a carefully crafted re-creation of his childhood bedroom. It’s appropriately childish — a lava lamp, a participation trophy, a white stuffed dog — yet the surroundings foreshadow the culture-shifting, technological force Zuckerberg would create. Amid thick tomes on C++, Java and Windows 95, we see a framed, sepia-toned photograph of what appears to be a young Zuckerberg, posing in his desk chair the same way he is now: one arm draped over the back of his office chair, the other hanging over his splayed out legs.

This series of photos, modeled after various phases in the CEO’s life, evoke how far Zuckerberg has come: Once a scrawny child learning to code, he’s now one of the richest men in the world … but that’s not the main takeaway the public took from the photo. Instead, they beg the question: Does Zuck have the drip ?

For the first time in his life, Zuckerberg looks a bit too cool for all the retro tech paraphernalia. A thick gold chain hangs around his neck, but it’s not so long as to cover the large, gothic-style text on his graphic tee: Carthago delenda est , or Carthage must die .

swagged out mark zuckerberg isn't real, swagged out mark zuckerberg can't hurt me pic.twitter.com/8FJ43id01T — limp brittzkit (@Brittymigs) May 15, 2024

Zuckerberg’s sudden shift in style is noticeable — for about 13 years, he’s worn the same gray shirt and jeans in most public appearances, because, of course, he is focusing on such large issues beyond the comprehension of us laypeople, who are not as rich as he is, because we just spend too much time getting dressed. In April, when Zuckerberg posted an Instagram reel about updates to the Meta AI assistant, onlookers honed in on Zuckerberg’s frat boy-esque chain, rather than the intricacies of the Llama 3 model. Someone altered a photo of Zuckerberg’s video and added a beard to his face, and it went viral, because he looked surprisingly good! And now the top comments on the video implore him to actually grow out his facial hair.

At a recent high-profile wedding in India , Zuckerberg wore a beaded Alexander McQueen suit, which he followed up the following day with a luxurious organza shirt from Rahul Mishra, one of India’s top designers. The shirt is so intricately embroidered that its cost is listed as “ request price ” online, like it’s a freshly caught lobster at an upscale restaurant. Sporting his glitzy, tiger-clad shirt, Zuckerberg was photographed next to Bill Gates, whose outfit would be permissible under my elementary school’s dress code.

is mark zuckerberg becoming stylish? pic.twitter.com/m2Cp96MiyV — derek guy (@dieworkwear) March 7, 2024

Zuckerberg’s outfit choices may seem frivolous, but they impact how the public perceives him and his business. That’s not something to take lightly when you’re the CEO of one of the biggest tech companies in the world, especially one that’s been raked over the coals for child safety issues and addictive design. If Zuckerberg is suddenly a fashionable MMA fighter instead of a dweeb who’s profiting off our personal data, could that suave style shield him from scrutiny?

“Personal style is a communication tool,” Amber Venz Box, the fashion blogger-turned-founder of the shopping platform LTK , told TechCrunch. “We have spoken and written communication, we have body language, and we have ‘drip’ — our appearance does communicate a lot about us and influences the way people feel about us.”

This is not the same man we saw looking ghostly and baggy-eyed as he testified before Congress over Facebook’s potential to undermine the electoral process. Remember just two years ago when we all clowned on that photo of Metaverse Zuck in front of the Eiffel Tower? And now we’re thirsting over his nonexistent beard? Zuck’s glow-up happened about as fast as we stopped caring about Horizon Worlds. Now he’s a buff MMA fighter who humblebrags on Instagram about running a 21-minute 5K. He no longer looks like the kid who got bullied in high school, but rather, the kid who would do the bullying.

“Maybe he stopped caring,” Avery Trufelman, a podcaster and fashion historian, told TechCrunch. “He’s like Taylor Swift post-Reputation era.”

Trufelman’s comparison of an abnormally powerful computer science geek and a record-breaking pop star might seem like a stretch, but in an era when tech companies control our attention for hours and hours every day, tech CEOs are a type of celebrity.

The most dominant celebrities, like Swift and Beyoncé, rarely talk to the press. They don’t have to. Instead, fans parse through lyrics for secret messages like they’re Talmudic scholars closely reading ancient texts. It’s not too different from techies listening in on Meta’s quarterly earnings calls, studying the rare insights we get into how Zuckerberg talks about his empire.

“That’s kind of what fashion discourse has become — image decoding, or armchair psychology,” Trufelman said. “Should it matter this much? I don’t know. But I think especially for big, intimidating public figures, this is one of the few open windows that we have into their inner workings, and so we’re trying to use it in whatever way we can.”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mark Zuckerberg (@zuck)

Zuckerberg didn’t just wear that Carthago delenda est shirt because it looks cool. The phrase is a nod to the CEO’s early days as a fledgling startup founder, who reminds us in his photoshoot that he slept in a bare-bones bedroom with a mattress on the floor until Facebook reached 100 million users (sure, he could’ve just gotten a bed frame and some light decor secondhand, but then he wouldn’t be able to glamorize his sigma grindset in an eventual 40th birthday photoshoot).

The hostile nature of his old bedroom, as well as his nod to the destruction of Carthage, pit Zuckerberg as a rebel against the tyranny of legacy tech companies. According to Business Insider , Zuckerberg made the declaration Carthago delenda est at Facebook in 2011, when Google launched Google+, which was then believed to be a Facebook killer. Zuckerberg put his team into “lockdown mode” — another “ era ” depicted in his photoshoot, to use the Swiftian term — where he worked his team tirelessly to squash their competitors.

This Latin phrase comes from the ancient Roman politician Cato the Elder, who concluded all of his speeches with a call to defeat Carthage. But Rome wasn’t exactly the underdog during the Punic Wars, and Zuckerberg isn’t an underdog either — the republic emerged victorious in all three of these wars, but it would not rest until Carthage was completely wiped out. That’s a bit more violent of an adage than “move fast and break things,” but then again, Google+ doesn’t exist anymore. It worked.

Zuckerberg’s desire to cement himself within the history of American business is obvious in his photoshoot. In one photo, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is strangely present, sitting on a tiny chair next to Zuckerberg in a model of the Harvard dorm where he launched Facebook.

The image is unsettling. Gates is dressed like he’s about to go for a run, wearing a hoodie, gym shorts, Adidas sneakers and tube socks. Zuckerberg, sitting in a taller chair, looks like he’s holding court over the tech icon. At this point, Zuckerberg is wealthier than Gates.

Zuckerberg has always seemed to understand that he can’t take Meta’s dominance for granted, nor can he get complacent about his place in the company — the board is set up so that Mark can never be ousted against his will. His T-shirt’s bloodthirsty slogan still applies: Right now, Meta’s biggest competitor, TikTok, is fighting for its life .

Meta is riddled with reminders that it’s hard to stay at the top forever — just look at its massive stock dip in 2022, when it became clear that Zuckerberg’s grand metaverse plans weren’t as inevitable as he made them seem. One such reminder is embedded in the entrance to the company’s corporate campus. When the company first set up shop in Menlo Park, it kept the entrance sign from Sun Microsystems, the lot’s previous tenant. The company just turned the sign around and slapped the Facebook “thumbs-up” on it, intentionally leaving the SunSystems logo visible from behind.

“I always thought it was so poetic to keep those reminders of the empires that rise and fall, and clearly, Zuck has this Ozymandias mindset,” Trufelman said. “I think he definitely sees his place in the scope of history.”

More TechCrunch

Get the industry’s biggest tech news, techcrunch daily news.

Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage.

Startups Weekly

Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly.

TechCrunch Fintech

The latest Fintech news and analysis, delivered every Sunday.

TechCrunch Mobility

TechCrunch Mobility is your destination for transportation news and insight.

Microsoft wants to make Windows an AI operating system, launches Copilot+ PCs

Copilot, Microsoft’s brand of generative AI, will soon be far more deeply integrated into the Windows 11 experience.

VCs wanted FarmboxRx to become a meal kit, the company bootstrapped instead

Some startups choose to bootstrap from the beginning while others find themselves forced into self funding by a lack of investor interest or a business model that doesn’t fit traditional…

Uber’s and Lyft’s ride-hailing deal with Minnesota comes at a cost

Uber and Lyft drivers in Minnesota will see higher pay thanks to a deal between the state and the country’s two largest ride-hailing companies. The upshot: a new law that…

a16z’s American Dynamism team launches program to introduce technical minds to VC

Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism fund has established a new fellowship program aimed at introducing top engineers and technologists to venture investing, a move that could help the firm identify less…

Teen fintech Copper had to abruptly discontinue its banking, debit products

Another fintech startup, and its customers, has been gravely impacted by the implosion of banking-as-a-service startup Synapse. Copper Banking, a digital banking service aimed at teens, notified its customers on…

Autodesk acquires AI-powered VFX startup Wonder Dynamics

Autodesk — the 3D tools behemoth — has acquired Wonder Dynamics, a startup that lets creators quickly and easily make complex characters and visual effects using AI-powered image analysis. The…

Farcaster, a crypto-based social network, raised $150M with just 80K daily users

Farcaster, a blockchain-based social protocol founded by two Coinbase alumni, announced on Tuesday that it closed a $150 million fundraise. Led by Paradigm, the platform also raised money from a16z…

Microsoft’s new ‘Volumetric Apps’ for Quest headsets extend Windows apps into the 3D space

Microsoft announced on Tuesday during its annual Build conference that it’s bringing “Windows Volumetric Apps” to Meta Quest headsets. The partnership will allow Microsoft to bring Windows 365 and local…

The ‘vote Trump’ spam that hit Bluesky in May came from decentralized rival Nostr

The spam reached Bluesky by first crossing over two other decentralized networks: Mastodon and Nostr.

There’s a real appetite for a fintech alternative to QuickBooks

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at the continued fallout from Synapse’s bankruptcy, how Layer wants to disrupt SMB accounting, and much more! To get a roundup of…

Bill Gates-backed wind startup AirLoom is raising $12M, filings reveal

The company is hoping to produce electricity at $13 per megawatt hour, which would be more than 50% cheaper than traditional onshore wind.

WitnessAI is building guardrails for generative AI models

Generative AI makes stuff up. It can be biased. Sometimes it spits out toxic text. So can it be “safe”? Rick Caccia, the CEO of WitnessAI, believes it can. “Securing…

French AI startup H raises $220M seed round

It’s not often that you hear about a seed round above $10 million. H, a startup based in Paris and previously known as Holistic AI, has announced a $220 million…

Boost your startup’s growth with a ScaleUp package at TC Disrupt 2024

Hey there, Series A to B startups with $35 million or less in funding — we’ve got an exciting opportunity that’s tailor-made for your growth journey! If you’re looking to…

As a US ban looms, TikTok announces a $1M program for socially driven creators

TikTok is pulling out all the stops to prevent its impending ban in the United States. Aside from initiating legal action against the U.S. government, that means shaping up its…

Microsoft’s Power Automate no-code platform adds AI flows

Microsoft wants to put its Copilot everywhere. It’s only a matter of time before Microsoft renames its annual Build developer conference to Microsoft Copilot. Hopefully, some of those upcoming events…

GitHub Copilot gets extensions

Build is Microsoft’s largest developer conference and of course, it’s all about AI this year. So it’s no surprise that GitHub’s Copilot, GitHub’s “AI pair programming tool,” is taking center…

Microsoft intros a Copilot for teams

Microsoft wants to make its brand of generative AI more useful for teams — specifically teams across corporations and large enterprise organizations. This morning at its annual Build dev conference,…

Microsoft upgrades its AI app-building platforms

Microsoft’s big focus at this year’s Build conference is generative AI. And to that end, the tech giant announced a series of updates to its platforms for building generative AI-powered…

UK data protection watchdog ends privacy probe of Snap’s GenAI chatbot, but warns industry

The U.K.’s data protection watchdog has closed an almost year-long investigation of Snap’s AI chatbot, My AI — saying it’s satisfied the social media firm has addressed concerns about risks…

Conservative cell carrier Patriot Mobile hit by data breach

U.S. cell carrier Patriot Mobile experienced a data breach that included subscribers’ personal information, including full names, email addresses, home ZIP codes and account PINs, TechCrunch has learned. Patriot Mobile,…

Spotify’s ‘Listening Party’ feature falls short of expectations

It’s been three years since Spotify acquired live audio startup Betty Labs, and yet the music streaming service isn’t leveraging the technology to its fullest potential — at least not…

Alchemist’s latest batch puts AI to work as accelerator expands to Tokyo, Doha

Alchemist Accelerator has a new pile of AI-forward companies demoing their wares today, if you care to watch, and the program itself is making some international moves into Tokyo and…

Kickstarter now lets you pledge after a campaign closes

“Late Pledge” allows campaign creators to continue collecting money even after the campaign has closed.

Stack AI wants to make it easier to build AI-fueled workflows

Stack AI’s co-founders, Antoni Rosinol and Bernardo Aceituno, were PhD students at MIT wrapping up their degrees in 2022 just as large language models were becoming more mainstream. ChatGPT would…

Pinecone launches its serverless vector database out of preview

Pinecone, the vector database startup founded by Edo Liberty, the former head of Amazon’s AI Labs, has long been at the forefront of helping businesses augment large language models (LLMs)…

Special mud helps XGS Energy get more power out of geothermal wells

Young geothermal energy wells can be like budding prodigies, each brimming with potential to outshine their peers. But like people, most decline with age. In California, for example, the amount…

Sonos finally made some headphones

The market play is clear from the outset: The $449 headphones are firmly targeted at an audience that would otherwise be purchasing the Bose QC Ultra or Apple AirPods Max.

Adobe brings Firefly AI-powered Generative Remove to Lightroom

Adobe says the feature is up to the task, regardless of how complex of a background the object is set against.

Porsche Ventures invests in battery startup South 8 to boost cold-weather EV performance

All cars suffer when the mercury drops, but electric vehicles suffer more than most as heaters draw more power and batteries charge more slowly as the liquid electrolyte inside thickens.…

Entertainment
Rex Reed Reviews
Awards Shows
Climate Change
Restaurants
Gift Guides
Business of Art
Nightlife & Dining
About Observer
Advertise With Us

Mark Zuckerberg Turns 40: A Look Back at Key Moments in the Facebook Founder’s Career

The facebook founder and ceo has spent exactly half his lifetime running his social media empire..

Mark Zuckerberg turns 40 today (May 14), and by now he has spent exactly half of his lifetime running Facebook ( Meta (META) ) , now Meta Platforms, which marked its 20th anniversary in February. Zuckerberg became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire in 2008, at age 23. Since then, his fortune has ballooned to $167 billion, all thanks to the astronomical expansion of his social media empire. While the Meta CEO is reportedly celebrating his milestone birthday on his new $300 million superyacht somewhere near Panama, we’ve decided to take a look back at the most significant moments in his long career in tech and endeavors outside work:

Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter

Thank you for signing up!

By clicking submit, you agree to our <a rel="noreferrer" href="http://observermedia.com/terms">terms of service</a> and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime.

1996: Creates his first messaging program

Zuckerberg created his first tech product at age 12, using the Atari BASIC programing language to build a messaging program called “ Zucknet. ” Zuckerberg’s father, a dentist, used the program in his office to communicate with patients.

2000: Builds Synapse

Zuckerberg created Synapse, an early version of the music software Pandora, while still in high school. Several companies, including AOL and Microsoft, were interested in buying Synapse and offering him a job, but he ultimately decided to put the app online for free.

2004: Launches “TheFacebook”

On Feb. 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched “TheFacebook” with co-founders Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes from his Harvard dorm room before dropping out the following year. What was originally a website that compared Harvard’s female students side by side, called Facemash, would one day become the world’s largest social media platform.

2006: Creators of “Harvard Connection” seek legal action

In 2006, the original creators of Harvard Connection who recruited Zuckerberg for his software expertise claimed he’d stolen their idea and demanded monetary compensation . The lawsuit eventually settled with Zuckerberg paying the creators $65 million after it was revealed that Zuckerberg may have, through instant messages, employed Harvard Connection’s intellectual property at the beginnings of creating TheFacebook.

2010: “The Social Network” movie premieres and Time’s “Person of the Year”

The critically acclaimed film based on the 2009 book, The Accidental Billionaires, documented the inception of Facebook and Zuckerberg’s tumultuous relationship with his co-founders and investors. Zuckerberg claimed many aspects of the film were inaccurate. The same year, Zuckerberg was named by Time magazine “ Person of the Year. ”

2012: Marries college sweetheart and Facebook goes public

Zuckerberg tied the knot with his college sweetheart Priscilla Chan in 2012. The couple now has two daughters and a son. In May that year, Facebook went public at $38 per share, valuing the company at over $100 billion. The IPO made Zuckerberg one of the richest people in the world overnight.

2012: Acquires Instagram for $1 billion

In a move to showcase Facebook’s appetite for growth and innovation, Zuckerberg oversaw the acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion in April 2012. This strategic acquisition significantly expanded Facebook’s user base and solidified its dominance in the social media landscape.

2014: Acquires WhatsApp and Oculus VR

Two years after the Instagram acquisition, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion. This acquisition demonstrated Zuckerberg’s vision for the future of online communication and positioned Facebook as a key player in the messaging space. The same year, Facebook acquired Oculus VR, the maker of virtual reality headset Oculus Rift, for $2 billion. This deal marked Facebook’s entry into the virtual reality market.

2015: The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative launches

Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, founded their charity organization in 2015 to address a range of issues from eradicating and managing diseases to improving education. CZI has since awarded around $4.8 billion in grants and nearly $300 million in ventures. Zuckerberg and Chan have pledged 99 percent of their Facebook shares to nonprofit.

2016: The Cambridge Analytica scandal

In 2016, a British data firm connected to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, Cambridge Analytica, used the private information of around 87 million Facebook users , leading to major pushback about user privacy. In response, Zuckerberg announced improvements in the company’s privacy policy to limit third-party access to user data and issued multiple personal apologies.

2021: Facebook becomes to Meta

In a major strategic rebranding effort, Zuckerberg announced in October 2021 that Facebook would change its corporate name to Meta Platforms, Inc . This move reflected Zuckerberg’s vision for the company beyond social media, emphasizing the importance of metaverse and the future of virtual connectivity.

Mark Zuckerberg Turns 40: A Look Back at Key Moments in the Facebook Founder’s Career

SEE ALSO : What Melinda French Gates’s Philanthropy Could Look Like Post-Gates Foundation

We noticed you're using an ad blocker.

We get it: you like to have control of your own internet experience. But advertising revenue helps support our journalism. To read our full stories, please turn off your ad blocker. We'd really appreciate it.

How Do I Whitelist Observer?

Below are steps you can take in order to whitelist Observer.com on your browser:

For Adblock:

Click the AdBlock button on your browser and select Don't run on pages on this domain .

For Adblock Plus on Google Chrome:

Click the AdBlock Plus button on your browser and select Enabled on this site.

For Adblock Plus on Firefox:

Click the AdBlock Plus button on your browser and select Disable on Observer.com.

The reinvention of Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook founder turns 40 eager to leave labels aside

The owner of meta, with a fortune of $177 billion, is very different today from the harvard nerd who founded the social media company 20 years ago.

Reaching the age of 40 is a milestone, whoever you are. Forty is a rite of passage, an awareness of adulthood and of one’s own mortality. It is a midpoint for looking back, then forward and, probably, back again, as Mark Zuckerberg will probably do on May 14, when the once prodigious tech genius blows out the candles with his wife, Priscilla Chan, and their three daughters. They are the only ones who know the depth of the well-documented midlife crisis the Facebook founder is experiencing, and have the only window into what is really going on in Zuck’s mind, as he is popularly known.

Some might think: crisis, what crisis? How can the man who has everything be in crisis? Health, strength (sports have become increasingly important to him over the years), a large and stable family (in addition to Priscilla and his daughters Max, August, and Aurelia, he has his parents and three sisters), a home (several, in fact), a technological legacy, fame, and a fortune estimated by Forbes at $177 billion, placing him fourth on the publication’s 2024 World Billionaires List .

Maybe that’s where the crisis comes from. Because others might think: what’s missing when you’ve got it all? If the millennial generation dodges this crisis precisely by having very little and hardly any stability, perhaps Zuckerberg is even tired of himself. He’s spent half his life being seen as a global egghead, coming up with solutions that turn into problems and looking for more solutions to fix them. He is considered one of the most powerful men in the world, but also, despite his simple image (simplistic, according to some), complex, dangerous and among the people who have caused the most damage to global society with the issues arising from social networks — lack of privacy, fake news, mental health problems, harm to children (in January a U.S. senator even told the Meta CEO and several colleagues that they had “blood on their hands;” he apologized to the parents present) — and, in general, immense global anger. Reaching 40 and ruminating, beyond money and mansions, must be complex for certain consciences.

As he turns 40, there are many more milestones for Zuckerberg. In February 2004 he founded what was then called Thefacebook. This year, the platform turns 20. Meta’s social networks — Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram — are used by almost four billion people. It is also 20 years since he first met his wife, Priscilla Chan.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mark Zuckerberg (@zuck)

The life and image of the Harvard boy who was about to be expelled from campus for using the personal data of students to produce a kind of online yearbook — the origins of Facebook — are very different today. Zuckerberg is trying to shed that label of university nerd that has followed him around for so long. He is also trying to leave behind the image of an intense Silicon Valley geek, who for years sported a gray t-shirt as a minimalist uniform — “I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community,” he told a forum years ago — and that of the capricious rich guy who bought his neighbors’ houses to ensure his own privacy. Now he seems to be looking for something different, beyond labels.

For the 40-year-old Zuckerberg, family is a priority; there is no doubt that his daughters are the center of his life. He displays this in his talks and on his own social networks, where he is often seen taking them out (especially Max, the eldest, who will be nine in November), playing sports, hiking in Yosemite, dressing up on Halloween or following Jewish traditions, something he has never abandoned. He has barely spoken out on the Israel-Hamas conflict, other than saying last October “the terrorist attacks by Hamas are pure evil.”

Another passion of the newly minted quadragenerian is Hawaiian cows, as odd as that sounds. It was 10 years ago, in late 2014, when news broke that the businessman had bought a huge piece of land in Hawaii for around $100 million. His arrival on Kauai was initially not to the islanders’ liking, but many now work for him under strict confidentiality agreements. His Koolau ranch, in the northeast of the island, according to The Times consists of 570 hectares and two mansions of 5,300 square meters (plus a bunker of almost 500 square meters) protected by two-meter walls. There he raises wagyu and angus cows on Macadamia nuts from his own trees — which his daughters help him plant — and home-brewed beer.

Planting trees and sports have become favorite hobbies: it is common to see Zuckerberg jogging or practicing martial arts, an interest that has earned him warnings from his own company, Meta, a company valued at $1.2 trillion. “Mr. Zuckerberg and certain other members of management participate in various high-risk activities, such as combat sports, extreme sports, and recreational aviation, which carry the risk of serious injury and death. If Mr. Zuckerberg were to become unavailable for any reason, there could be a material adverse impact on our operations,” read a company report issued in February. In fact, last November, he injured a ligament while training and had to undergo surgery.

Physical activity has also changed him physically, while his image has also evolved. He has moved away from the jeans and gray t-shirt with matching sweatshirt uniform and is taking more and more sartorial risks. A few weeks ago, he was given a beard in an internet mock-up and many praised the look; Gwyneth Paltrow even said he reminded her of her ex-husband, Coldplay singer Chris Martin. The New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman devoted a whole article to him called The Meta-morphosis of Mark Zuckerberg , where she developed the idea that his fresher image was “the most visible sign yet that in the phenomenology of Silicon Valley, we are entering a post-Jobsian age.”

Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg on the red carpet for the 2020 Breakthrough Prize at NASA Ames Research Center on November 3, 2019 in Mountain View, California.

His main rival these days is also a far cry from the late Steve Jobs and the absolute discretion exercised by the Apple co-founder. Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have an increasingly thinly veiled feud that nearly came to blows a few months ago. In June, Musk challenged Zuckerberg to a cage fight in Las Vegas. Musk’s biographer, Walter Isaacson , assured this newspaper in September that they were never serious: “It’s a total joke. It’s a metaphor. He’s not going into a cage to fight Mark Zuckerberg . He has a schoolboy sense of humor where he trolls people. He makes jokes. And other people don’t understand that one of his personalities is that of a juvenile prankster.”

The generally upward rollercoaster that has been Zuckerberg’s life has had one never-failing witness: Priscilla Chan. The doctor and half of their mutual foundation, to which they will donate 99% of their fortune, almost missed the ride: they met at a party with friends — a kind of farewell because he thought he was being kicked out of college — and Zuckerberg asked to meet her again, with one caveat: “I asked her out but told her we’d need to go out soon since I might only have a few days left,” he recalled in a recent post on Facebook . “Later on I started Facebook, we got married, and now have three wonderful girls. What a wild ride.” It may not be history’s most romantic declaration of love, but for the class computer geek 20 years later, it’s not bad.

More information

Meta adds risk factor of Mark Zuckerberg’s love for combat sports in annual report

A wolf in IT’s clothing: Why Mark Zuckerberg’s style choices matter

Archived in.

Mark Zuckerberg
Francés online
Inglés online
Italiano online
Alemán online
Crucigramas & Juegos

Especialízate en Project Management con esta maestría presencial en Madrid, España

Mark Zuckerberg and Wife Priscilla Chan Share Rare Photos of Their Daughters

Mark zuckerberg, wife priscilla chan and their three daughters celebrated the facebook co-founder's 40th birthday in a special way. see pics from the event..

Mark Zuckerberg 's 40th birthday pics will have your full attention.

The Meta CEO shared insight into his birthday celebration with his wife Priscilla Chan and their three daughters , Maxima , 8, August , 6, and Aurelia , 13 months, posting snaps from the trip down memory lane to none-other than the social networking site he co-founded.

"Grateful for my first 40 years!" Mark captioned his May 14 Facebook post, "Priscilla threw me a little party and recreated a bunch of places I lived in the early days."

In the photos, the children are seen with their parents inside a set made to resemble Pinocchio's Pizza & Subs in Cambridge, Mass., where Mark joked he "basically lived in" while a college student. He also included an image of himself and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates inside a small room designed to look like the "Harvard dorm where I launched Facebook."

In another pic, Mark appears with his and Priscilla's two eldest daughters in another small room containing a '90s desktop computer. He captioned the photo, "Showing my girls the room I grew up in."

Mark also shared pics of replicas of what he described as the "childhood bedroom where I learned to code" and the "first apartment with just a mattress on the floor where I stayed until we reached 100 million people."

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mark Zuckerberg (@zuck)

Update on Kate Middleton's Return to Work After Cancer Diagnosis

Perfect match trailer reveals love is blind villain.

Read the full text of Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard graduation speech

Mark Zuckerberg posted the speech he delivered for the Harvard University graduation on May 25, 2017 to his Facebook page . The full text is below.

President Faust, Board of Overseers, faculty, alumni, friends, proud parents, members of the ad board, and graduates of the greatest university in the world,

But first, the last couple of days have brought back a lot of good memories.

Related story: Mark Zuckerberg to Harvard graduates: Create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose

Mark Zuckerberg finally got his Harvard degree