mark zuckerberg problem solving

Filed under:

How to fix Facebook

Can Facebook be redeemed? Twelve leading experts share bold solutions to the company’s urgent problems.

Share this story

• Share this on Facebook
• Share this on Twitter
• Share this on Reddit
• Share All sharing options

Share All sharing options for: How to fix Facebook

Facebook is broken, and after a recent deluge of damning internal company leaks to the press and Congress, the world has unassailable proof of how troubled it really is.

Almost 2 billion people around the world use a product owned by Meta ( formerly called Facebook ), including WhatsApp and Instagram, every day. For many of its users, the nearly $1 trillion valuation company is the internet and their primary platform for communication and information. Millions of us are dependent on its products in one way or another.

So what can be done to fix Facebook? Or is it past the point of fixing?

The documents leaked by employee whistleblower Frances Haugen, which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal in late September, revealed a host of problems: how Facebook-owned Instagram can be detrimental to teenagers’ mental health , how the company struggled to contain erroneous anti-vaccine Covid-19 content posted by its users, and how political extremism spread on the platform leading up to the January 6 Capitol riot. The documents Haugen leaked also showed that Facebook was seemingly aware of serious harms caused by its products, but in many cases failed to sufficiently address them.

In a statement, Facebook spokesperson Drew Pusateri responded in part: “We take steps to keep people safe even if it impacts our bottom line. To say we turn a blind eye to feedback ignores these investments, which includes the over $5 billion we’re on track to spend this year alone on safety and security, as well as the 40,000 people working on these issues at Facebook.”

For years, Congress has debated how and if it should regulate Facebook and other major social media products like Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, and Google-owned YouTube. Outside researchers have been raising concerns about how the potentially grave long-term consequences of these platforms may be harming society at large . American users across the political spectrum have become increasingly suspicious of Big Tech . And even Facebook itself has said it welcomes regulation (while at the same time saying it’s against some regulation efforts, like strengthening antitrust laws ). But so far, federal bills to regulate privacy, competition, or other aspects of social media businesses have gone nowhere.

Now, the gravity of the new reporting about Facebook — particularly the research about Instagram’s harm to teenagers — is leading many Republicans and Democrats to agree that even if their political motivations are different, something must be done to rein in Facebook.

And it’s not just Congress that’s thinking about Facebook’s problems and how to deal with them, it’s also social scientists, the company’s former and current employees, policy experts, and the many people who use its services.

Even Facebook says it is seeking guidance on how to address some of its problems. The company says that, for two and a half years, it has been calling for updated regulations on its business.

“Every day, we make difficult decisions on where to draw lines between free expression and harmful speech, privacy, security, and other issues, and we use both our own research and research from outside experts to improve our products and policies,” wrote Pusateri. “But we should not be making these decisions on our own which is why for years we’ve been advocating for updated regulations where democratic governments set industry standards to which we can all adhere.”

So now is an urgent time to explore ideas old and new — inside and outside the realm of political reality — about how to confront a seemingly intractable problem: Can Facebook be fixed?

To try to answer that question, Recode interviewed 12 of the leading thinkers and leaders on Facebook today: from Sen. Amy Klobuchar , who is leading new Senate legislation to update antitrust laws for the tech sector; to Stanford Internet Observatory researcher Renee DiResta, who was one of the first researchers to study viral misinformation on the platform; to former Facebook executive Brian Boland , who was one of the few high-ranking employees at the company to speak out publicly against Facebook’s business practices.

First, most believe that Facebook can be fixed, or at least that some of its issues are possible to improve. Their ideas are wide-ranging, with some more ambitious and unexpected than others. But common themes emerge in many of their answers that reveal a growing consensus about what Facebook needs to change and a few different paths that regulators and the company itself could take to make it happen:

• Antitrust enforcement. Facebook isn’t just Facebook but, under the Meta umbrella, also Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Oculus. And several experts Recode interviewed believe that forcing Facebook to spin off these businesses would defang it of its concentrated power, allow smaller competitors to arise, and challenge the company to do better by offering customers alternatives for information and communication.
• Create a federal agency to oversee social media, like the Food and Drug Administration. The social media industry has no dedicated oversight agency in the US the way that other industries do, despite its growing power and influence in society. That’s why some people we interviewed advocated for making a new agency — or at least increasing funding for the existing FTC — so that it could regulate safety standards on the internet the same way the FDA does for food and pharmaceutical drugs.
• Change Facebook’s leadership. Facebook’s problems are almost synonymous with the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg, who has unilaterally controlled the company he started in his Harvard dorm room in 2004. Many interviewees believe that for any meaningful change to happen, Facebook needs an executive shake-up, starting from the very top.
• Section 230 reform. Section 230 is a landmark law that protects free speech as we know it online. It does that by shielding tech companies like Facebook from facing legal consequences for the real-world harm users can cause with the content they post on its platforms. But reforming 230 in a way that won’t run into First Amendment challenges, or entrench incumbents like Facebook itself, will be challenging.
• Increase transparency. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t know exactly what the problem is. Facebook, like other social media companies, is largely a black box to researchers, journalists, and analysts trying to understand how its complex and ever-changing algorithms dictate what billions of people see online. Which is why some of the experts interviewed by Recode argued that Facebook and other social media companies should be legally required to share certain internal data with vetted researchers about what information is circulating on their platforms.
• Hold Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives criminally liable. This was the most extreme idea proposed, but some experts Recode interviewed suggested that Facebook executives should be criminally prosecuted for either misleading business partners or downplaying human harms their company causes.

Other approaches proposed by interviewed experts are more incremental, like redesigning Facebook’s Groups, a part of the app that has been a breeding ground for conspiracy movements like QAnon, anti-vaccine activism, and extremist political events.

The interviews were conducted separately. In each, Recode asked, “How would you fix Facebook?” Each expert defined on their own what they believe are Facebook’s biggest problems, as well as how they would fix them. Recode then asked follow-up questions based on the interviewees’ answers. These interviews have been combined, condensed, and edited for length and clarity.

Their answers are in no way a comprehensive list of all the possible solutions to Facebook’s problems, and many of them would be difficult to achieve anytime soon. But they offer a thoughtful start during a pivotal moment, as millions of people are reconsidering the bargain they agree to each time they use the company’s products.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has long been a leader in Congress calling for regulation of the social media industry , on topics from political advertising to health misinformation . In October, Klobuchar introduced a Senate antitrust bill aimed at stopping major tech platforms from using their power to unfairly disadvantage competitors. Klobuchar also is the chair and top-ranking Democrat on the Senate antitrust committee.

How would you fix Facebook?

​​First, federal privacy law. Second, protecting kids online. Third, antitrust updates [and] law changes, to make our laws as sophisticated as the companies that are now in our economy. And then finally, doing something about the algorithms.

Can you explain what you would do in each of those areas?

People have to opt in if they want their data shared. When Apple recently gave their users a decision about whether to have their data tracked, 75 percent did not opt in. And that is what you would see across platforms, if it actually was a clear choice. Which it never is — it’s very confusing.

Secondly, protecting kids online, that would include not only expanding the protections from the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

You can’t doubt that Facebook developed an innovative product. Yes, they did. But they clearly haven’t been able to compete with the times in terms of what innovations could protect people from the problems they’re having now, like for parents that don’t want to get their kids hooked.

So my argument is that by allowing the antitrust laws to actually work and be updated, then you’re going to be able to look at some of these past mergers, like Instagram.

And here, we’re not talking about “destroying” Facebook or all these dramatic words, we’re talking about looking at the industry as a whole and figuring out if we need to update our competition laws, to track everything from what’s happening with the app stores to what’s happening with the platforms when it comes to selling stuff, so that they cannot be preferencing their own content and discriminating against competitors. I believe that is one, but not the only way; using the marketplace to push innovations and responsiveness to these problems.

How would you reform Section 230?

The one where we need to do the most work to figure out while still respecting free speech is [why] they’ve got total immunity when they amplify [harmful] stuff.

I already have a bill out there to get rid of the immunity for vaccine misinformation during a health crisis, as well as one that [Sen. Mark] Warner’s (D-VA) leading with Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and myself, which is about discrimination, violent conduct, and civil rights violations and the like.

Do you think Facebook can really change with Mark Zuckerberg in charge?

Have I been impressed by how he’s handled this latest crisis? No. He went sailing and issued posts from his boat. Basically he was saying, “Yeah, we’ll look at this,” but we got a whole week of no apologies. And that’s fine. He can choose not to apologize. That’s up to him. That’s a PR decision. But I think we are beyond expecting that he’s going to make the changes or whoever’s in charge of Facebook is going to make the changes. I think it’s time for us to act.

Matt Stoller, research director at the American Economic Liberties Project

Matt Stoller is a leading critic of monopoly power in the US economy , particularly in tech. He’s the author of the book Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy .

One, I would send Mark Zuckerberg to jail for securities fraud and advertising fraud. Maybe Sheryl Sandberg too, for insider trading. There, you have a cultural lawlessness, and you have to address that it’s a threat to the law. So we’ve got to start there.

They lied to advertisers around their reach. And that caused advertisers to spend more money on Facebook than they would have. And with these advertising frauds, they decided not to tell investors. [Editor’s note: Facebook has been sued by advertisers for allegedly inflating key metrics around how many of its users actually see advertisements companies pay for.]

Then, No. 2, I would break up the firm. The mergers of Instagram and WhatsApp are illegal and they should be unwound. That would create more fair competition in the social media market. And when firms compete, they usually have to compete by differentiating their product around quality. I would also break up their advertising. I would also sever Facebook’s ads subsidiary. [Editor’s note: Together with Google, Facebook’s advertising business represents a majority of all advertisements sold online in the US . Some have proposed separating these companies’ advertising business lines from their other lines of business to increase competition.]

And No. 3, set clear rules of the road for the industry around advertising. Just ban surveillance advertising. When I think about the problem, I look at it and I say, “Okay, this is a firm that has an advertising model that is based on undermining social stability.” They break the law and use legal power to fortify and protect their business model. So you have to address that. That’s the problem that I see.

Why do you think criminal liabilities for Mark Zuckerberg is a higher priority than breaking antitrust?

Antitrust or any regulatory policy is going to take several years to really go into force. And these guys just don’t care. They don’t care what the government does. They simply don’t believe that anything will affect them. And the only way to address that problem is to actually bring the problem straight to them. And that means sanctioning them personally: threatening to take away their freedom for violating the law. You have to make the stakes real.

The point here isn’t that Mark Zuckerberg is a bad guy. The point here is that you have a culture of lawlessness at the firm.

Brian Boland, former Facebook executive

Brian Boland is one of the few former Facebook executives to publicly criticize the company for its business practices, arguing that Facebook needs to be more transparent about the proliferation of viral misinformation and other harmful content on its platform. Boland was a vice president of partnerships and marketing, and worked at the company for 11 years.

We need to dramatically improve the safety and privacy of the platform. This breaks down into at least three things — the creation of a fully empowered regulatory body that has oversight over digital companies, reforms of Section 230, and meaningful transparency.

The one thing that Facebook could control right now is transparency. Helping society understand the harms on social media is an important step for fixing the problems. Twitter just shared research data on which political content gets more distribution on Twitter. That’s a great step where they are taking the lead.

Why is a regulatory body so important?

A regulatory body is in line with how we’ve generally worked in the United States when we’ve wanted to rein in industries that are out of control. The same way that we build building codes, that we regulate the chemicals industry. The food supply used to be unsafe, but then the FDA was created to make it safe. If you think about your car that you’re getting in every day, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration keeps you safe by making sure the car is safe.

So the things that we need to do for digital is just like all the other regulation that we’ve done before. That still gives people the great products, right? You still have awesome cars, you still have amazing food, and there’s chemicals you use every day in your life. And the building that you’re in right now is not going to collapse. We just need to do the same thing with digital platforms and services and have that regulatory body and oversight to understand what’s harmful and broken, and then the regulatory authority to mandate fixing those things.

How would you go about making data more transparent?

I think you start to make data feeds of public data available, in the same way that you have engagement data available in CrowdTangle . But you ensure that it spans the globe and has metrics like reach and engagement and distribution, so people can see what gets recommended [and] goes viral.

Algorithms aren’t good or bad, they just promote things based on the way they’ve been initially coded, and then what they learn along the way, so it’s not like people deeply understand what algorithms do or why they do it.

What would you change in Section 230?

There are two important elements for me: including a provision for a duty of care and removing protections of what algorithms amplify. A duty-of-care provision would ensure that Section 230 doesn’t remove the responsibility of platforms to reduce harms to their customers. This wouldn’t require that every harmful act is removed, but that the platforms take meaningful steps to reduce harm.

For the second part, we can ensure that we protect people’s free speech on platforms like Facebook, but actually hold the platforms accountable for what they choose to amplify. These algorithms take actions that make some speech heard far more than other speech. Facebook has control over its algorithms and should not be protected from the harms those algorithms can create.

Do you think Facebook can be reformed with Mark Zuckerberg at the helm?

There’s a chance, with strong regulatory oversight, that they’ll be forced to change — but his nature is not to move in this direction. If we want Facebook and Instagram to be responsible and safer, then I don’t think you can have him and the current leadership team leading the company.

Roger McNamee, early Facebook investor and member of “the real Facebook oversight board”

Roger McNamee is an early Facebook investor and former adviser to Mark Zuckerberg. He famously changed his opinion of the company after he saw what he believed were serious failures in its leadership and business priorities.

In my opinion, you need to have three forms of legislative relief. You need to address safety, you need to adjust privacy, and you need to address competition. If Facebook were to disappear tomorrow, 100 companies would compete to fill the void, doing all the same horrible things Facebook is doing. So whatever solutions we craft must be broad enough that they prevent that from happening.

On safety, I recommend that the government create an agency, analogous to the Food and Drug Administration, that would set guidelines for which technologies should be allowed to come to market at all, and what rules they would have to follow to create a commercial product and then to remain in the market.

How do you address privacy issues?

My mentor and friend Shoshana Zuboff said this best, which is that surveillance capitalism is as morally flawed as child labor, and should be banned for the same reason.

The starting place would be to ban any third-party use of location, health, financial, app usage, web browsing, and whatever other categories of intimate data are out there.

You used to have a relationship with Mark Zuckerberg as an early investor. Do you have any confidence that the company can be fixed under his leadership?

I think this is the wrong question, if you don’t mind my saying so. I think that the underlying issue here is, we tell CEOs that their only job is to maximize shareholder value. It used to be that you told CEOs that they had to find a balance between shareholders, employees, the communities where employees live (including the country where they live), and its customers and suppliers. They had five constituents, and now we only have one [shareholders]. And so it’s important to recognize that a big part of what’s wrong here is that we have operated in an environment where we just applied the incorrect set of incentives to managers in any field, and Mark has just been more successful than other people in creating a product that took advantage of the complete absence of rules.

Benedict Evans, technology analyst

Benedict Evans is one of the tech industry’s leading analysts and thinkers on the business of social media. He is an independent analyst, and used to work for the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, an early investor in Facebook.

Do you think anything else needs to be done to fix many of the problems Facebook is criticized for? And if so, what do you think should be done?

We are clearly on a path toward regulatory requirements around content moderation both in the EU and the UK. I don’t know how you could do that in a way that could be reconciled with the American Constitution — it sounds like a legal requirement to remove speech.

You can believe that there’s a lot of nonsense talked about Facebook and also believe that it has huge problems, isn’t on top of them, and doesn’t have the incentive structures right. But it’s amazing to me how much of the press and how many politicians completely ignore YouTube, which has almost exactly the same problems.

Why do you think breaking up Facebook is not the right response?

What is the theory for why changing who owns Instagram would stop teenage girls from looking at self-harm content, and for that content being shared and suggested? Why would the dynamics change? Such a move certainly would not make it any easier to compete with Instagram, just as making YouTube a separate company would not make it any easier to make a new video-sharing site. The network effects are internal to the product, not the ownership. It also wouldn’t change the business model.

To take an analogy from another generation, there are all sorts of problems with cars, and they kill people, but that doesn’t make it sensible to compare them with tobacco. And we can punish GM for shipping a car it knows will blow up in a low-speed rear collision, but we can’t make it stop teenage boys getting drunk and driving too fast. Not everything is an antitrust problem, and most policy problems are complicated and full of trade-offs. Tech policy isn’t any simpler than education policy or health care policy.

I often think the sloganeering around “break them up!” and indeed, the new comparison of tech to tobacco, is displacement: People are hunting for simple slogans and easy answers that let you avoid having to grapple with the complexity of the issues.

In the US, the cult of the First Amendment makes this even harder. The US cannot pass laws requiring social media companies to remove X or Y, whereas the UK and EU are already well on the way to passing such laws, which makes “break them up” an even stronger form of displacement — it’s what you can do as a US politician, rather than what can work.

Rep. Ken Buck

Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) is a leading Republican in Congress on regulating tech. He co-led the historic congressional investigation into Big Tech and antitrust which finished last year, and has been one of the most senior members of his party to join with Democrats in bipartisan legislation to strengthen antitrust laws.

The obvious dangers of the platform are that bad people can use it for evil purposes. And then there are other unintended consequences where good people use it and are harmed through no fault of their own, but just because of the psychological impact.

When there’s a study that shows that something was dangerous with a car or with a food product, there’s a recall.

Facebook should be able to recall its product and to ameliorate the damages that are done before it goes too far. And they didn’t do that. Part of it has to be a personnel issue with leadership and the failure of leadership.

What’s the personnel issue? What changes would you make there?

I think that people who were in the know and realized that there was an increase in teen suicide rates, and that there was a relationship between their product and that increase — and they continued doing what they did — should be held criminally liable.

And as a member of Congress, what can you do? What are you doing to try to hold those people responsible?

I think that the role of Congress is to examine the situation — which we did with a 16-month investigation on the antitrust subcommittee — [and] expose the problems. And obviously, we saw things from the outside that now the whistleblower has confirmed from the inside with very damaging documents.

Two, trying to fix the situation which we are in with antitrust laws, and perhaps with reforms to Section 230 . [Editor’s note: Section 230 is a landmark internet law that shields social media companies from being sued for most kinds of illegal activity committed by their users]. And then No. 3, it’s really up to the executive branch to make a decision on whether there is criminal liability, civil liability, and how to proceed.

Do you think Facebook should be broken up into separate companies?

I’m not sure that breaking up Facebook from Instagram makes as much sense as having other companies that are competing with Facebook and Instagram, in trying to innovate better and, frankly, offer parents an alternative.

I’m absolutely opposed to regulation. I don’t think the government should say, “This is appropriate speech in the newspaper or on Facebook or on Twitter.” I don’t think the government should say, “This is a feature that is positive or negative.” I think we’ve got to give consumers a choice. I think we make much more rational decisions when consumers make that choice.

When someone associates the word regulation with me, they think I’m going crazy. When they associate the words “competition in the marketplace” with me, they’re thinking, “Oh, okay, now I understand.”

Do you think that Facebook can be fixed with Mark Zuckerberg at the helm?

I think he has to take full responsibility and either take himself out of the picture, and others out of the picture, or make sure that changes are made so that he’s getting better information to make better decisions. But Facebook cannot continue to exist, should not continue to exist, the way they have.

Rashad Robinson, president, Color of Change

Rashad Robinson is the president of Color of Change, a civil rights advocacy group that co-led a historic advertiser boycott against Facebook last June in protest of the proliferation of hate speech on the platform.

I would have Instagram and WhatsApp owned by other people. And so I would shrink it.

And I would create real consequences and liability to its business model for the harm that it causes. And I would force Facebook to actually have to pay reparations for the harm they have done to local independent media , and to all the sorts of institutions that their sort of platform has destroyed.

Do you think you’ve seen progress since you helped lead the boycott against Facebook?

At that time [of the boycott], we didn’t have any levers within the government. There was no one to ask at the White House to get involved in this. Now a year has happened and we have a Biden administration. And so my demands are not to Facebook anymore, my demands are to the Biden administration and to Congress, and to tell them that they actually have to do their jobs, that we have outsized harm being done by this platform, and they actually have to do something about it.

What would real consequences look like for Facebook?

I’m not the numbers guy, but I do think [the consequences that] we’ve seen in the past from the FTC and other places have been the equivalent of a maybe expensive night out for [Facebook]. [Editor’s note: In 2019, the FTC fined Facebook $5 billion for its privacy failures in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. While it was a record-breaking fine imposed by the FTC, it failed to hinder Facebook’s financial performance and growth.]

I think that surveillance marketing on these platforms, combined with these platforms being able to have Section 230, that has to end — you can’t have it both ways. [Editor’s note: Surveillance marketing , or surveillance capitalism , is a pejorative name for business models — such as those that underpin Facebook and Google — that track people’s online behavior to target specific advertisements to them.]

Do you think Facebook can be fixed with Mark Zuckerberg in charge?

The current leadership lacks the sort of moral integrity to be the type of problem solvers our society needs. And the sooner they deal with the structures that have allowed them to be in charge, the better for all of us. But to be clear, this moment we are in — the story will be told in generations about who Mark Zuckerberg is and what he has done. And Mark Zuckerberg will always want to play by a different set of rules. He believes he can. He’s built a system for that.

Nate Persily, professor at Stanford Law School and director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center

Nate Persily co-founded an academic partnership program with Facebook in 2018, called Social Science One , which aimed to give researchers studying the real-world effects of social media unprecedented access to otherwise private Facebook data.

In 2020, Persily resigned from the program. He has since discussed the limitations of voluntary programs like Social Science One and is calling for legislation to mandate companies like Facebook to share more information with outside researchers.

The internet platforms have lost their right to secrecy. They simply are too big and too powerful. They cannot operate in secret like a lot of other corporations. And so they have an obligation to give access to their data to outsiders.

I have been working on this for five years. I’ve tried to do it with Facebook, and I’ve become convinced that legislation is the only answer.

And why do you think this is the first of Facebook’s problems to fix?

There is a fundamental disagreement between conventional wisdom and what the platforms are saying on any number of these issues.

That’s where the Haugen revelations are so momentous. It’s not just that you see quasi-salacious stuff about what’s happening on the platforms — it’s that you actually get a window into what they have access to and the kind of studies that they can perform. And then you start saying, “Well, look, if outsiders with public spirit had access to the data, think about what we could learn right now.”

Of course, all of this has to be done in a privacy-protected way to make sure that there’s no repeat of another Cambridge Analytica — and that’s where the devil is in the details.

Why should the average person care about Facebook being transparent with its data with researchers?

If you think that these platforms are the cause of any number of social problems stretching from anorexia to genocide, then we cannot trust their representations as to whether social media is innocent or guilty of committing these problems or contributing to these problems. And so [transparency] is a prerequisite to any kind of policy intervention in any of these areas, as well as actions by civil society. So part of it is informing governments and policymakers, but some of it is also informing us about what the dangers are on the platforms and how we can act to prevent them.

Transparency is a meta problem, if you will. It is the linchpin to studying every other problem as to the harms that social media is wreaking on society. And let me also say, we should be prepared for the possibility that when we do have access to the data, the truth is going to be not as bad as people think.

The story could be a much more complicated one than that algorithms are manipulating people into doing things that they otherwise wouldn’t do.

How do you make sure that Facebook is transparent with the data?

It’s quite simple. The FTC, working with the National Science Foundation, shall develop a program for vetted researchers and research projects, and shall compel the platforms to share the data with those researchers in a privacy-protected format. The data will reside at the firms [and will] not be given over to the federal government, so that we prevent another Cambridge Analytica.

It’s also not just about requiring data transparency [with researchers]. We should require [social media platforms] to disclose certain things to the public that are not privacy-dangerous. Basically, something like, “What are the most popular stories and popular links on Facebook each day?” That is not privacy-endangering.

Sen. Ed Markey

Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat, has been a key congressional voice on online privacy for children for over two decades. He co-introduced the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) , a law requiring tech companies to obtain parental consent “before collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children” under 13. Today, he’s focused on updating COPPA and making broader reforms to the tech industry.

No. 1, I will pass the Child Online Privacy Protection Act 2.0. I was the author of that law in 1998 that’s been used to protect children in company after company. We have to upgrade that law in order to pass a long-overdue bill of rights for kids and for teens, so that kids under 16 get the same protection as kids under 13.

I would say [we should also] ban targeted ads to children and create an online eraser button, so parents and children can tell companies to delete the troves of data that they have collected about young people. And to have a cybersecurity protection requirement for kids and teens.

Because it’s obvious that Facebook only cares about children to the extent to which they are of monetary value.

Why children’s privacy first over many issues that Facebook has, like misinformation?

Kids are uniquely vulnerable. And we adults need to make sure that their data is not being used in ways that are harmful to them.

Facebook won’t protect young people. It can’t be voluntary any longer; it does not work.

Do you think Facebook can be fixed with Mark Zuckerberg at the helm?

I think regardless of who is running Facebook, we have to put a new, tough regulatory scheme in place in the event that Mark Zuckerberg leaves and his successor has the exact same philosophy. So we can’t trust the institution. We have to trust our laws.

Do you think Facebook should be broken up?

I think that the antitrust process is something that should begin. But just breaking up Facebook won’t solve the problems that we’re discussing today. We need to pass an impressive set of laws that stop social media giants from invading our privacy.

Renée DiResta, disinformation researcher at Stanford Internet Observatory

Renée DiResta is a longtime researcher of disinformation on social networks . She advised Congress on the role of foreign influence misinformation networks in the 2016 US elections. DiResta has also been one of the first social media researchers to track how anti-vaccine content and other kinds of false or extremist content spreads through Facebook Groups.

Groups are probably the most broken things on the platform today.

If I could pick one thing to really focus on in the short term, it would be more sophisticated rethinking of groups and how people are recommended groups, and how groups are evaluated for inclusion and being promoted to other people.

Why do you think fixing Groups is more important than, say, what people see in their news feed?

Because [groups] are a very, very significant part of what you see in your feed.

QAnon came out of these groups that were recommended to people, and then they came to be places where people really felt that they had found new friends and, in a sense, that kind of insularity. They evolved into echo chambers, and the groups became deeply disruptive.

But Facebook did not appear to have sophisticated metrics for evaluating [if] what was happening within groups was healthy or not healthy. The challenge became: Once groups are formed, disbanding them is a pretty major step. Perhaps one example of this is the Stop the Steal group, which grew to several [hundreds of thousands of] people or more. [Editor’s note: The Stop the Steal Facebook group was one of the key platforms where organizers of the January 6 Capitol riot prepared to march on Washington, DC.]

How could Facebook better curate content?

I think there are certain areas where [Groups] should largely be kept out of the recommendation engine entirely. I believe there are plenty of researchers who disagree with me, but I do believe that there are many areas where it’s not a problem to allow the content to be on site — it’s more a matter of it being amplified and pushed to new people.

[But] health misinformation actually kills people. Like, there is a non-theoretical harm that is very, very real. And that’s where I argue for certain cases being treated distinctly differently. You’re not going for six people being wrong on the internet, or at the local pub, or standing at the local corner with a bullhorn. That’s not what we’re going for. When we give people amplification, when we enable them to grow massive communities that trust in them [rather than] in authorities — which are institutions that actually have more accurate information — then we find ourselves in a situation where there are real negative impacts on real people in the real world. And so that question of, “How do we understand harms?” is actually the guiding principle that we should be using to understand, “How do we rethink curation?”

Katie Harbath, former director of public policy at Facebook

Katie Harbath spent 10 years working at Facebook, including as a public policy director on issues like election security. She left the company this March and is now the founder and CEO of tech policy consultancy Anchor Change.

I think one of the struggles with Facebook right now is just people see Mark, hear Mark, or see the name Facebook, and they just don’t trust anything that comes out of their mouths.

Are there changes in leadership at the top and fresh blood that are needed to help really give a new perspective, and really be somebody that people would listen to?

Can you talk a little bit about organizational and structural problems at Facebook?

Facebook’s such a flat company, and they want to move fast. They’re giving People [HR] employees different metrics because most of those are usually centered around growth. Then, when the Integrity team comes in and wants to make changes that might slow those numbers, you can get resistance. [Editor’s note: The Integrity team at Facebook is responsible for assessing the misuses and unintended consequences of the platform.] Because that’s what people’s bonuses are attached to.

The tech world loves working in ones and zeros — they’re very data-driven. Data wins arguments. But the problems that the Integrity team is working on aren’t all data-centric. There’s a lot of nuance. There’s gonna be trade-offs. So if you’ve got Integrity as a whole separate team, they’re trying to go to another team and be like, “Hey, you should do this because it’s gonna produce X, Y, and Z harms.” But they’re like, “Well, that’s gonna screw up my metric, and then I’ll get a bad performance review.” So you end up pitting teams against one another, like Integrity and Product.

How would you fix that?

There’s no structural change that’s perfect.

But is it right for Integrity to be under Growth? Should it be separate? Should it be better integrated into the product lifecycle? One of the things that came out of some of these settlements around privacy is that there are particular procedures that the company had to put into place in order to make privacy considerations from the very beginning. So are there elements of that, that need to be done with the Integrity team?

Derek Thompson, staff writer, the Atlantic

Derek Thompson writes about economics, technology, and the media. He’s been writing about Facebook for several years, and his recent piece comparing Facebook to “attention alcohol” has sparked conversations about reframing how we think about social media .

One, I would treat social media the way we treat alcohol: have bans and clearer limitations on use among teenagers. And study the effects of social media on anxiety, depression, and negative social comparison. Two, I would continue to shame Facebook to edit its algorithm in a way that downshifts the emphasis on high-arousal emotions such as anger and outrage. And three, I would hire more people to focus not on misinformation in the US, but on the connection between mis- or disinformation and real-world violence in places outside the US, where real-world violence flowing from these Facebook products is a common phenomenon.

What would it mean to treat Facebook the way we treat alcohol?

The debate about Facebook is way too dichotomous. It’s between one group that says Facebook is effectively evil, and another group that says Facebook is basically no big deal. And that leaves a huge space in the middle for people to treat Facebook the same way we think about alcohol. I love alcohol. I use alcohol all the time, the same way I use social media all the time. But [with alcohol], I also understand, based on decades of research and social norms, that there are ways to overdo it.

We have a social vocabulary around [alcohol] overuse and drinking and driving. We don’t have a similar social vocabulary around social media. And social media can be very good as a social lubricant — and also dangerous as a compulsive product, as we have with alcohol. And that’s why I see them as reasonably analogous.

How would you change Facebook’s algorithm?

Facebook is both a mirror and a machine. It holds up a high-quality mirror to human behavior and shows us a reflection that includes all of human kindness, and all of human generosity, and all of human hate, and all of human conspiracy theorizing, but it is also a machine that, through the accentuation of high-arousal emotions, brings forth or elicits the most outrage and the most conspiracy theorizing and the most absurd disinformation.

We can’t fix the mirror — that would require fixing humanity. But we can fix the machine, and it’s pretty clear to me that the Facebook algorithmic machine is optimized for surfacing outrage, indignation, hate, and other high-arousal negative emotions. I would like to see more research done not only by Facebook itself but also by any government, the NIH, maybe by Stanford and Harvard, on alternative ways of organizing the world’s information [than] predominantly by the hybrid distribution of high-arousal negative emotions.

Can you explain why addressing Facebook’s issues in its operations outside the US is a priority problem that you would fix, and how you would fix that?

Most tech critics are hysterically over-devoted to the problems of technology in America, when these tech companies touch billions of people outside of America. And we should spend more time thinking about their impact outside of the country where their headquarters are based. Most of Facebook’s research into its negative effects, as I understand it, is focused on the effects of Facebook in the US. But we didn’t have WhatsApp- and Facebook-inspired genocide in the US.

Correction, November 8, 9:40 am: A previous version of this story misstated the last name of Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change.

Will you support Vox today?

We believe that everyone deserves to understand the world that they live in. That kind of knowledge helps create better citizens, neighbors, friends, parents, and stewards of this planet. Producing deeply researched, explanatory journalism takes resources. You can support this mission by making a financial gift to Vox today. Will you join us?

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via

The GameStop stock frenzy, explained

How tiktok shop ads turned an obscure, inaccurate book into a bestseller, social media platforms aren’t equipped to handle the negative effects of their algorithms abroad. neither is the law., sign up for the newsletter today, explained, thanks for signing up.

Check your inbox for a welcome email.

Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.

• Privacy Policy
• Affiliate Disclosure

The Strategy Watch

To be the Best Source of Business Strategy & Analysis

Leadership Qualities – Styles, Skills, and Traits of Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of the blue and white platform called Facebook, which has given us the privilege to be with our friends and families 24/7 and share each moment with them. He was a student at Harvard but got dropped out from there. But the base of Facebook was established by him through the years on Harvard, and after getting out of there, he devoted all of himself to his dream project, and now we all know the result. Today the annual revenue of Facebook is nearly $17.9 billion, with almost 1.7 billion users worldwide. Whatever Facebook is now, Mark Zuckerberg is the one who made everything possible. And today, we’re going to know about his leadership style, qualities, and skills behind Facebook’s success. 

He is one of the most influential tech entrepreneur in the recently history of the world. In this study we will look closely what we can learn from his leadership quality and style. 

Leadership Qualities of Mark Zuckerberg

Seeing things differently:  There’s no doubt that Mark Zuckerberg has built Facebook with his amazing programming knowledge, but many people have that knowledge, but not everyone has come up with something like Facebook. Because Mark has a visionary power in himself, he likes to see things differently. Before Facebook, there’re other platforms for communication but mostly with ordinary features. But Mark wanted to do something unique. And even now, he’s continually trying to make Facebook more unique with his numerous ideas and vision.

Developing the right company culture:  Facebook isn’t like an ordinary workplace. It doesn’t maintain any strict flat hierarchy or workplace rules. Here employees with creativity, innovation, and out-of-the-box get valued and rewarded. Any employee can just relax anywhere in the office and do his work. The whole Facebook office’s design is the most unique one than any other big company in the world. And all these ideas mainly came from Zuckerberg, who wanted to build a workplace environment and culture where people won’t feel pressured and enjoy working.

He surrounds himself with the right people:  The visionary power of Zuckerberg always helped him to get in touch with the right people. The idea of creating Facebook was criticized initially, but he made the team with some friends and roommate who believed in him and helped him to launch Facebook. Still now, in every situation, Mark manages to get the right people with him. Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, who has contributed a lot to the company, didn’t get much acceptance in the beginning by others in the company. But Mark believed in him and showed others how much right he was by hiring Sheryl. 

Willing to face criticism:  Mark Zuckerberg has been criticized a lot for his decisions. A few years ago, when he was accused of some severe charges of privacy violation of users and had to go to court, he lots a huge amount of popularity among people. But still, he never gave up and took all the blames positively. He believes criticisms are a part of life, and it teaches some lessons as well. That’s why it’s better to face and accept those.

Leadership Style of Mark Zuckerberg:  Mark Zuckerberg has never followed any structured leadership. He was both aggressive and encouraging. He did his best to provide a friendly and relaxed workplace. But his employees reported him as a bad listener. It can be said that he uses autocratic , democratic , and laissez-fair leadership styles all at once. But throughout the year’s Mark has tried to improve himself and now he has become more communicative. And that’s what makes him a Transformational Leader .  He has learned from his mistake and now focused on changing his actions for the betterment of the company and the employees. 

Leadership Characteristics and Traits of Mark Zuckerberg

Here’re some traits of Mark Zuckerberg that describe his personal characteristics that get reflected in his leadership style.

• Hard worker

Mark Zuckerberg knows what he wants, and when he gets engaged in something, he never loses his focus. He can continuously work for the betterment of his company or on a new idea. Surely he has some outstanding programming skills and compelling vision, but it is hard work, which made him to all these things he has done till today.

Mark Zuckerberg is ruthless whenever he needs to be. The steaming clash with the Winklevoss twins and co-founder Estavez caused much hype in the media due to Mark’s ruthlessness. He’s always determined to remove the competitive threats in the market. We all know how he became desperate to bring down the popularity of Snapchat and divert more people towards Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp. 

Like most of the leaders, Mark doesn’t believe in taking risks without proper analysis. Yes, he has made many bold decisions, and he believes that not taking risks is the most significant risk, but only after a thorough calculation and exploration. He first measures the possibilities and only then moves forward to the next step.

Other traits and characteristics of Mark Zuckerberg are:

• Relationship-oriented
• Assertiveness
• Mindfulness 
• Multi-tasking
• Accepting challenges
• Competitive
• Strong values

Leadership Skills of Mark Zuckerberg

Each leader has some skills that help him/her to perform his/her duties more perfectly. Here’re some leadership skills of Mark Zuckerberg.

Critical thinker:  Mark always tends to thinks deeply. He likes to have a clear idea, no matter how small a fact is. He believes his more profound thought and understanding helps him to know what’s right or wrong. He better accepts the second or third best idea after a clear understanding instead of grabbing the best idea without any thoughts.

Problem Solving:  Marks Zuckerberg is a problem-solver. He continually asks himself if he is doing right or why a specific idea isn’t working. He never leaves a problem without considering it the second time. Once he said that until he gets what’s actually wrong and how it can be fixed, he can’t just sit and relax. He feels an urge to solve the puzzle. 

Equanimity:  As a leader, Mark is someone who doesn’t lose his cool easily, no matter how stressful the situation becomes. He can take a lot of pressure and talks normally. There were many times when his company’s inside situation was a mess, and everyone was panicked. But he controlled everything maturely with a gentle and calm approach.

Bottom Line

Mark Zuckerberg isn’t a perfect leader. He was criticized many times for his leadership techniques and qualities. Even there were rumors that he might leave Facebook. But he never had the sense of giving up. He changed his flaws and constantly working to improve himself. And we hope there’s more to see from himself.

• Leadership Skills, and Style of Jeff Bezos
• Leadership Qualities of Larry Page
• Leadership Style of Tim Cook
• https://maisfl.com/leadership-attributes-of-mark-zuckerberg-essay/
• https://www.europeanbusinessreview.com/why-mark-zuckerbergs-leadership-failure-was-a-predictable-surprise/
• https://www.businessinsider.com/this-one-trait-makes-you-a-better-boss-according-to-mark-zuckerberg-2018-1
• https://ceomarkzuckerberg.weebly.com/leadership.html
• https://www.livechat.com/success/zuckerberg-effect-qualities-of-a-good-boss/

“Fahmina has been actively contributing here with her writing skills. Fahmina has always had a way with her words, and now she is focused on channelling that knack for writing towards a more professional line of work. She is currently an undergrad, majoring in Marketing from the University of Dhaka. Her interests include writing engaging and insightful pieces related to Business Strategy Formulation, Business Analysis, Strategy Ideation, Market Analysis as well as Market Research.”

Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s Plan to Wire the World

It’s a dusty town, and the roads are narrow and unpaved. A third of the people here live below the poverty line, and the homes are mostly concrete blockhouses. Afternoons are hot and silent. There are goats. It is not ordinarily the focus of global media attention, but it is today, because today the 14th wealthiest man in the world, Mark Zuckerberg, has come to Chandauli.

Ostensibly, Zuckerberg is here to look at a new computer center and to have other people, like me, look at him looking at it. But he’s also here in search of something less easily definable.

I’ve interviewed Zuckerberg before—I wrote about him in 2010, when he was TIME’s Person of the Year—and as far as I can tell, he is not a man much given to quiet reflection. But this year he reached a point in his life when even someone as un-introspective as he is might reasonably pause and reflect. Facebook, the company of which he is chairman, CEO and co-founder, turned 10 this year. Zuckerberg himself turned 30. (If you’re wondering, he didn’t have a party. For his 30th birthday, on May 14, Zuckerberg flew back east to watch his younger sister defend her Ph.D. in classics at Princeton.) For years, Facebook has been the quintessential Silicon Valley startup, helmed by the global icon of brash, youthful success. But Facebook isn’t a startup anymore, and Zuckerberg is no longer especially youthful. He’s just brash and successful.

At 30, Zuckerberg still comes off as young for his age. He says “like” and “awesome” a lot. (The other word he overuses is folks .) He dresses like an undergraduate: he’s in a plain gray T-shirt today, presumably because it’s too hot in Chandauli for a hoodie. When he speaks in public, he still has the air of an enthusiastic high school kid delivering an oral report. In social situations his gaze darts around erratically, only occasionally coming to rest on the face of the person he’s talking to.

But he’s not the angry, lonely introvert of The Social Network . That character may have been useful for dramatic purposes, but he never actually existed. In person, one-on-one, Zuckerberg is a warm presence, not a cold one. He hasn’t been lonely for a long time: he met Priscilla Chan, the woman who would become his wife, in his sophomore year at Harvard. In October he stunned an audience in Beijing when he gave an interview in halting but still credible Mandarin. Watch the video: he’s grinning his face off. He’s having a blast. He’s like that most of the time.

Zuckerberg can be extremely awkward in conversation, but that’s not because he’s nervous or insecure; nervous, insecure people rarely become the 14th richest person in the world. Zuckerberg is in fact supremely confident, almost to the point of being aggressive. But casual conversation is supposed to be playful, and he doesn’t do playfulness well. He gets impatient with the slowness, the low bandwidth of ordinary speech, hence the darting gaze. He has too much the engineer’s approach to conversation: it’s less about social interaction than about swapping information as rapidly as possible. “Mark is one of the best listeners I’ve ever met,” says Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO. “When you talk to Mark, he doesn’t just listen to what you say. He listens to what you didn’t say, what you emphasized. He digests the information, he comes back to you and asks five follow-up questions. He’s incredibly inquisitive.”

I have found this to be true—sometimes he gives the impression of having thought through what I’m saying better than I have—with the caveat that listening to me (unlike, I imagine, listening to Sandberg, or for that matter speaking Chinese) doesn’t consume enough of his bandwidth to keep his attention from wandering off in search of more data. Probably it’s not an accident that he invented an entirely new way to socialize: efficiently, remotely, in bulk.

Zuckerberg has been thinking about Facebook’s long-term future at least since the site exceeded a billion users in 2012. “This was something that had been this rallying cry inside the company,” he says. “And it was like, O.K., wow, so what do we do now?” (It’s tempting to clean up Zuckerberg’s quotes to give them more gravitas, but that’s how he talks.) One answer was to put down bets on emerging platforms and distribution channels, in the form of some big-ticket acquisitions: the photo-sharing app Instagram for $1 billion (a head snapper at the time, but in hindsight a steal); the virtual-reality startup Oculus Rift for $2 billion; the messaging service Whats App for $22 billion (still a head snapper). But what about the bigger picture—the even bigger picture? “We were thinking about the first decade of the company, and what were the next set of big things that we wanted to take on, and we came to this realization that connecting a billion people is an awesome milestone, but there’s nothing magical about the number 1 billion. If your mission is to connect the world, then a billion might just be bigger than any other service that had been built. But that doesn’t mean that you’re anywhere near fulfilling the actual mission.”

Fulfilling the actual mission, connecting the entire world, wouldn’t actually, literally be possible unless everybody in the world were on the Internet. So Zuckerberg has decided to make sure everybody is. This sounds like the kind of thing you say you’re going to do but never actually do, but Zuckerberg is doing it. He is in Chandauli today on a campaign to make sure that actually, literally every single human being on earth has an Internet connection. As Sandberg puts it (she’s better at sound bites than Zuckerberg): “If the first decade was starting the process of connecting the world, the next decade is helping connect the people who are not yet connected and watching what happens.”

Part of Zuckerberg’s problem-solving methodology appears to be to start from the position that all problems are solvable, and moreover solvable by him. As a first step, he crunched some numbers. They were big numbers, but he’s comfortable with those: if he does nothing else, Zuckerberg scales. The population of the earth is currently about 7.2 billion. There are about 2.9 billion people on the Internet, give or take a hundred million. That leaves roughly 4.3 billion people who are offline and need to be put online. “What we figured out was that in order to get everyone in the world to have basic access to the Internet, that’s a problem that’s probably billions of dollars,” he says. “Or maybe low tens of billions. With the right innovation, that’s actually within the range of affordability.”

Zuckerberg made some calls, and the result was the formation last year of a coalition of technology companies that includes Ericsson, Qualcomm, Nokia and Samsung. The name of this group is Internet.org, and it describes itself as “a global partnership between technology leaders, nonprofits, local communities and experts who are working together to bring the Internet to the two-thirds of the world’s population that doesn’t have it.”

Based on that, you might think that -Internet.org will be setting up free wi-fi in the Sahara and things like that, but as it turns out, the insight that makes the whole thing feasible is that it’s not about building new infrastructure. Using maps and data from Ericsson and NASA—-including a fascinating data set called the Gridded Population of the World, which maps the geographical distribution of the human species—plus information mined from Facebook’s colossal user base, the -Internet.org team at Facebook figured out that most of their work was already done. Most humans, or about 85% of them, already have Internet access, at least in the minimal sense that they live within range of a cell tower with at least a 2G data network. They’re just not using it.

Facebook has a plan for the other 15%, a blue-sky wi-fi-in-the-Sahara-type scheme involving drones and satellites and lasers, which we’ll get to later, but that’s a long-term project. The subset of that 85% of people who could be online but aren’t: they’re the low-hanging fruit.

But why aren’t they online already? To not be on the Internet when you could be: from the vantage point of Silicon Valley, that is an alien state of being. The issues aren’t just technical; they’re also social and economic and cultural. Maybe these are people who don’t have the money for a phone and data plan. Maybe they don’t know enough about the Internet. Or maybe they do know enough about it and just don’t care, because it’s totally irrelevant to their day-to-day lives.

( Interactive: How Much Time Have You Wasted on Facebook? )

You’d think Zuckerberg the arch-hacker wouldn’t sully his hands with this kind of soft-science stuff, but in fact he doesn’t blink at it. He attacks social/economic/cultural problems the same way he attacks technical ones; in fact it’s not clear that he makes much of a distinction between them. Human nature is just more code to hack—never forget that before he dropped out, Zuckerberg was a psych major. “If you grew up and you never had a computer,” he says, “and you’ve never had access to the Internet, and somebody asked you if you wanted a data plan, your answer would probably be, ‘What’s a data plan?’ Right? Or, ‘Why would I want that?’ So the problems are different from what people think, but they actually end up being very tractable.”

Zuckerberg is a great one for breaking down messy, wonky problems into manageable chunks, and when you break this one down it falls into three buckets. Business: making the data cheap enough that people in developing countries can pay for it. Technology: simplifying the content and/or services on offer so that they work in ultra-low-bandwidth situations and on a gallimaufry of old, low-end hardware. And content: coming up with content and/or services compelling enough to somebody in the third world that they would go through the trouble of going online to get them. Basically the challenge is to imagine what it would be like to be a poor person—the kind of person who lives somewhere like Chandauli.

Engineering Empathy

The Facebook campus in Menlo Park, Calif., isn’t especially conducive to this. It’s about as far from Chandauli, geographically, aesthetically and socioeconomically, as you can get on this planet. When you walk into Facebook’s headquarters for the first time, the overwhelming impression you get is of raw, unbridled plenitude. There are bowls overflowing with free candy and fridges crammed with free Diet Coke and bins full of free Kind bars. They don’t have horns with fruits and vegetables spilling out of them, but they might as well.

The campus is built around a sun-drenched courtyard crisscrossed by well-groomed employees strolling and laughing and wheeling bikes. Those Facebookies who aren’t strolling and laughing and wheeling are bent over desks in open-plan office areas, looking ungodly busy with some exciting, impossibly hard task that they’re probably being paid a ton of money to perform. Arranged around the courtyard (where the word hack appears in giant letters, clearly readable on Google Earth if not from actual outer space) are -restaurants—Lightning Bolt’s Smoke Shack, Teddy’s Nacho Royale, Big Tony’s Pizzeria—that seem like normal restaurants right up until you try to pay, when you realize they don’t accept money. Neither does the barbershop or the dry cleaner or the ice cream shop. It’s all free.

You’re not even in the first world anymore, you’re beyond that. This is like the zeroth world. And it’s just the shadow of things to come: a brand-new campus, designed by Frank Gehry, natch, is under construction across the expressway. It’s slated to open next year.

(Because of the limits of space and time, a lot of Silicon Valley companies don’t build new headquarters; they just take over the discarded offices of older firms, like hermit crabs. Facebook’s headquarters used to belong to Sun Microsystems, a onetime power-house of innovation that collapsed and was acquired by Oracle in 2009. When Facebook moved in, Zuckerberg made over the whole place, but he didn’t change the sign out front, he just turned it around and put Facebook on the other side. The old sign remains as a reminder of what happens when you take your eye off the ball.)

As Zuckerberg himself puts it, when you work at a place like Facebook, “it’s easy to not have empathy for what the experience is for the majority of people in the world.” To avoid any possible empathy shortfall, Facebook is engineering empathy artificially. “We re-created with the Ericsson network guys the network conditions that you have in rural India,” says Javier Olivan, Facebook’s head of growth. “Then we brought in some phones, like very low-end Android, and we invited guys from the Valley here—the eBay guys, the Apple guys. It’s like, Hey, come and test your applications in these conditions! Nothing worked.” It was a revelation: for most of humanity, the Internet is broken. “I force a lot of the guys to use low-end phones now,” Olivan says. “You need to feel the pain.”

Needless to say, in all the time I spent at Facebook, I never heard anybody call it that. They just called it low-end. But his point stands.

Internet 911

Not to keep you in suspense, but Facebook figured out the answer to how to get all of humanity online. It’s an app.

Here’s the idea. First, you look at a particular geographical region that’s underserved, Internet-wise, and figure out what content might be compelling enough to lure its inhabitants online. Then you gather that content up, make sure it’s in the right language and wrap it up in a slick app. Then you go to the local cell-phone providers and convince as many of them as possible that they should offer the content in your app for free, with no data charges. There you go: anybody who has a data-capable phone has Internet access—or at least access to a curated, walled sliver of the Internet—for free.

This isn’t hypothetical: Internet.org released this app in Zambia in July. It launched in Tanzania in October. In Zambia, the app’s content offerings include AccuWeather, Wikipedia, Google Search, the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action—there’s a special emphasis on women’s rights and women’s health—and a few job-listing sites. And Facebook. A company called Airtel (the local subsidiary of an Indian telco) agreed to offer access for nothing. “I think about it like 911 in the U.S.,” Zuckerberg says. “You don’t have to have a phone plan, but if there’s an emergency, if there’s a fire or you’re getting robbed, you can always call and get access to those kinds of basic services. And I kind of think there should be that for the Internet too.”

This makes it sound simpler than it is. For Facebook to simply reach out from Silicon Valley and blanket a country like Zambia with content requires exactly the kind of nuance and sensitivity that Facebook is not famous for. Just figuring out what language the content should be in is a challenge. The official language in Zambia is English, but the CIA’s World Factbook lists 17 languages spoken there. And Zambia is cake compared with India, which has no national language but officially recognizes 22 of them; unofficially, according to a 2011 census, India’s 1.2 billion inhabitants speak a total of 1,635 languages. It is, in the words of one Facebook executive, “brutally localized.”

But the hardest part is persuading the cell-phone companies to offer the content for free. The idea is that they should make the app available as a loss leader, and once customers see it (inside Facebook they talk about people being “exposed to data”), they’ll want more and be willing to pay for it. In other words, data is addictive, so you make the first taste free.

This part is crucial. It’s not enough for the app to work—the scheme has to replicate itself virally, driven by cell-phone companies acting in their own self-interest. It’s a business hack as much as it is a technical one. Before Zambia, Facebook tried a limited run in the Philippines with a service provider called Globe, which reported nearly doubling its registered mobile data-service users over three months. There’s your proof of concept.

The more test cases Facebook can show off, the easier it will be to persuade telcos to sign on. The more telcos that sign on, the more data Facebook compiles and the stronger its case gets. Eventually the model begins to spread by itself, region by region, country by country, and as it replicates it draws more and more people online. “Each time we do the integration, we tune different things with the operator and it gets better and better and better,” Zuckerberg says. “The thing that we haven’t proven definitely yet is that it’s valuable for them to offer those basic services for free indefinitely, rather than just as a trial. Once we have that, we feel like we’ll be ready to go around to all the other operators in the world and say, This is definitely a good model for you. You should do this.” (There’s a quiet arrogance to it, as there is to a lot of what Facebook does. Facebook is basically saying, Hey, third-world cell-phone operators, by the way, your business model? Let us optimize it for you.)

Although when you make a plan in Menlo Park and try to execute it in rural India, not everything is going to go as planned. That was amply demonstrated by Zuckerberg’s visit to Chandauli. It was meant to be a quiet, discreet affair, but Zuckerberg’s schedule got tight, so instead of driving down from New Delhi he had to be flown in by helicopter. Before you land a helicopter in India, you have to check in with the local police. The local police tipped off the local media, which meant that when Zuckerberg arrived he was enveloped in a hot, dusty scrum of journalists, police, village elders, curious onlookers, private security and kids in school uniforms who thought the whole thing was hilarious.

Education is one of Zuckerberg’s interests as a philanthropist—earlier this year he and his wife donated $120 million to Bay Area schools—and he ducked into a local school to see a classroom. “There were, like, 40 students sitting on the floor, and then the guy running it was saying that there were 1.4 million schools and this was one of the better ones,” he said later—he can never resist a statistic. “There was no power. There are no toilets in the whole village!” Eventually, Zuckerberg’s handlers got him into the computer center, a single spacious, airy room with a laser printer, a copy machine and a couple dozen laptops, each one with a student at it. It was then ascertained that the power was out in Chandauli, as it often is, so even though Zuckerberg had come 7,500 miles to see a display of Internet connectivity, the Internet was down.

Since he was there, Zuckerberg had a few heavily stage-managed conversations with the kids, which showcased in equal measure his genuine good humor and heart-stopping social awkwardness. This was followed by an apparently spontaneous but still kind of amazing musical performance by a guy with a one-stringed instrument called a bhapang . Then the world’s 14th richest man was photographed in the school courtyard, whisked back to his SUV, convoyed back to the heli-pad and choppered back to New Delhi in a huge orange helicopter in time for a meeting with the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. I’m told he changed into a suit for the occasion.

On the way, I asked Zuckerberg if his life ever seemed surreal to him. His answer: “Yes.” But I’m not sure he meant it.

Colonialism 2.0

There’s another way to look at what Facebook is doing here, which is that however much the company spins it as altruistic, this campaign is really an act of self–serving techno-colonialism. Facebook’s membership is already almost half the size of the Internet. Facebook, like soylent green, is made of people, and it always needs more of them. Over the long term, if Facebook is going to keep growing, it’s going to have to make sure it’s got a bigger Internet to grow in.

Hence Internet.org. And if that Internet is seeded by people who initially have limited options online, of which Facebook (and no other social network) is one, all the better. Facebook started up a similar program in 2010 called Facebook Zero, targeted at developing markets, which made a streamlined mobile version of Facebook available for free, with no data charges. At the time this was not considered altruism; it was just good, aggressive marketing (it’s actually illegal in Chile because it violates Chilean Net-neutrality laws). Facebook Zero bears a strong family resemblance to Internet.org.

There’s something distasteful about the whole business: a global campaign by a bunch of Silicon Valley jillionaires to convert literally everybody into data consumers, to make sure no eyeballs anywhere go unexposed to their ads. Everybody must be integrated into the vast cultural homogeneity that is the Internet. It’s like a zombie plague: World War Z(uckerberg). After all, it’s not as though anybody asked two-thirds of humanity whether they wanted to be put online. It makes one want to say, There are still people here on God’s green earth who can conduct their social lives without being marketed to. Can’t we for God’s sake leave them alone?

( Interactive: Who Are Your Happiest Friends on Facebook? )

I aired this point of view to a few Facebook executives. Predictably, I didn’t get a lot of traction. Zuckerberg’s (unruffled) response was that Internet.org isn’t about growing Facebook for the simple reason that there isn’t any money in showing ads to the people that use the app, because they don’t have any. “When most people ask about a business growing, what they really mean is growing revenue, not just growing the number of people using a service,” he says. “Traditional businesses would view people using your service that you don’t make money from as a cost.”

The most he’ll cop to is that it might pan out as a business in the very, very long term. “There are good examples of -companies—Coca-Cola is one—that invested before there was a huge market in countries, and I think that ended up playing out to their benefit for decades to come. I do think something like that is likely to be true here. So even though there’s no clear path that we can see to where this is going to be a very profitable thing for us, I generally think if you do good things for people in the world, that that comes back and you benefit from it over time.”

Sandberg says something similar: “When we’ve been accused of doing this for our own profit, the joke we have is, God, if we were trying to maximize profits, we have a long list of ad products to build! We’d have to work our way pretty far down that list before we got to this.”

The other way of looking at Internet.org is the way Internet.org wants to be looked at: it’s spreading Internet access because the Internet makes people’s lives better. It improves the economy and enhances education and leads to better health outcomes. In February, Deloitte published a study—-admittedly commissioned by Facebook—that found that in India alone, extending Internet access from its current level, 15%, to a level comparable with that of more developed countries, say, 75%, would create 65 million jobs, cut cases of extreme poverty by 28% and reduce infant mortality by 85,000 deaths a year. Bottom line, this isn’t about money; it’s about creating wealth and saving lives.

The issue of public health is especially important, because one of the knocks on -Internet.org is that the need for connectivity is trivial compared with more fundamental needs like food and water and medicine. A few months after Zuckerberg announced Internet.org, Bill Gates appeared to take that line in an interview with the Financial Times . “Hmm, which is more important, connectivity or malaria vaccine?” Gates said. “If you think connectivity is the key thing, that’s great. I don’t.” And more succinctly: “As a priority? It’s a joke.” Zuckerberg brought this up himself. “I talked to him after that,” he says. “I called him up and I was like, ‘What’s up, dude?’ But he was misquoted, and he even corrected it afterward. He was like, ‘No, I fully believe that this is critical.’” The Financial Times never ran a correction—but the Deloitte study does make a convincing case that connectivity and health care are not unrelated.

As for the encroaching cultural homogeneity that comes with the Internet, there’s more than one point of view there too. I talked about it with Mary Good, a cultural anthropologist at Wake Forest who’s done fieldwork on the impact of Facebook in the Polynesian archipelago of Tonga. “I have found that the introduction of Facebook does not become a Western technology behemoth ruthlessly steamrolling across a passive new territory of eager users,” she wrote in an email. “Instead, adopting new digital media and incorporating it into their lives is a process, and sometimes facilitates the maintenance of more long-standing traditions.”

Ultimately, these points of view don’t exclude each other. Zuckerberg can be both enriching himself and other people, both expanding and consolidating Facebook’s dominance and saving lives, all at the same time. He’s both empowering people (by giving them Internet access) and disempowering them (by making them into consumers and marketing targets). Thinking about the kids in the computer center in Chandauli, I realized I would have had a hard time delivering my speech about the evils of techno-colonialism to them. The kids at those laptops didn’t look like zombies; they looked focused and determined. They looked as serious as a heart attack. Osama Manzar co-founded the Digital Empowerment Foundation, the NGO responsible for setting up that center in Chandauli. I asked him what Internet access means to those kids. “You feel you are at par with the rest of the world,” he says. “It psychologically empowers them so much. They think that they have arrived.” In Chandauli, Manzar is as big a celebrity as Zuckerberg is.

The thought bubbles over those students’ heads seemed to read: The global knowledge economy is leaving the station, and we want to get on board, and you’re sitting there wringing your hands because we have to look at a few ads? Come on, man. That’s some zeroth-world bull, right there.

The 15% Solution

Regardless of whether he is or is not a global cyberimperialist, Zuckerberg is an ace problem solver, and it’s always instructive to watch him at work. Compare Facebook’s approach to extending Internet connectivity with, say, Google’s. Although it is not part of Internet.org, Google too has expressed concern over this issue, and its response is something called Project Loon, a network of high-altitude helium balloons that will, some day, in theory, continuously circle the globe, beaming wi-fi down to remote areas. It sounds loopy and romantic, but then again so did self-driving cars. When last sighted, Project Loon was well into practical trials in a remote part of Brazil, working on adding LTE and on getting its balloons to stay up longer.

This is a 15% solution, focused on areas that have no Internet access whatsoever. Facebook is looking at these areas too. In March it bought a company called Ascenta that makes solar-powered drones and folded it into an internal group called the Connectivity Lab, headed by Yael Maguire, a highly regarded director of engineering at Facebook. In broad outline, the plan is to put up a fleet of drones, each one the size of a 747 but ultralight, which will cruise at 60,000-plus feet, geosynchronously. In conjunction with a network of satellites and a new laser communications technology, the drones will beam the Internet to places that conventional infrastructure can’t reach. “Our hypothesis is that you need some unusual technologies,” Maguire says. “We have a bunch of long-term, very high-risk programs that we believe are going to dramatically change the way in which we provide access economically.”

Google also has a drone program—in April it bought one of Ascenta’s competitors, Titan Aerospace—but what’s notable about its approach so far is that it has been almost purely technological and unilateral: we want people to have the Internet, so we’re going to beam it at them from a balloon. Whereas Facebook’s solution is a blended one. It has technological pieces but also a business piece (making money for the cell-phone companies) and a sociocultural one (luring people online with carefully curated content). The app is just one part of a human ecosystem where every-body is incentivized to keep it going and spread it around. “Certainly, one big difference is that we tend to look at the culture around things,” Zuckerberg says. “That’s just a core part of building any social project.” The subtext being, all projects are social.

( Interactive: Facebook Knows Your Perfect Wedding Date )

Ello Goodbye

I asked Zuckerberg, in the spirit of midlife reflectiveness, what he thought of the various popular critiques of Facebook: that it’s addictive, that it promotes narcissism, that it interferes with face-to-face contact between loved ones. In 2012, Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and MIT professor, wrote a blistering op-ed in the New York Times about the way social media like Facebook reinforce but also impoverish people’s relationships, stripping out essential elements of human contact. As Turkle put it, “We have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.”

Once again, zero traction. “I actually don’t read most of the coverage about Facebook,” Zuckerberg says. “I try to learn from getting input from people who use our services directly more than from pundits. But yeah, I’ve heard the general critique. Whenever any technology or innovation comes along and it changes the nature of something, there are always people who lament the change and wish to go back to the previous time. But, I mean, I think that it’s so clearly positive for people in terms of their ability to stay connected to folks.”

I asked him about Ello, an upstart for-pay social network built on the premise that it doesn’t show you ads and doesn’t harvest your personal information. When a social network does those things, Ello’s manifesto argues, “You’re the product that’s being bought and sold.” Zuckerberg’s take was, as usual, practical: whatever ethical merits it might have, the business model won’t scale. “Our mission is to connect every person in the world. You don’t do that by having a service people pay for.” I suggest that Facebook’s users are paying, just with their attention and their personal information instead of with cash. A publicist changes the subject.

But before that happens Zuckerberg also notes—and it was the only time I saw him display irritation—that Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote something similar in September in a statement spelling out Apple’s privacy policy: “When an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product.” The shot was probably meant for Google, but Facebook was definitely in the blast radius. “A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers,” Zuckerberg says. “I think it’s the most ridiculous concept. What, you think because you’re paying Apple that you’re somehow in alignment with them? If you were in alignment with them, then they’d make their products a lot cheaper!”

People sometimes ask me if I think that Zuckerberg is a little bit “on the spectrum,” as the saying goes. My answer is no. In fact, I sometimes wonder if he might be one of the most mentally healthy people I’ve ever met. He’s extremely smart, but he doesn’t have any of the neurotic self-consciousness or self-doubt that often accompany high intelligence. His psyche, like his boyish face, is unlined. His drives are unconfused: when he wants something, he sics his hugely powerful and rapacious intellect on it, and usually it comes trotting back with the prey held gently in its jaws, even if the prey gets a little bruised along the way. He’s concerned with nuance and subtle shades of meaning only to the extent that they’re of practical use to him, which means not at all. His faith in himself and what he’s doing is total. He may be wrong, but he’s not cynical; he’s wholly ingenuous.

One might argue that somebody who shapes the social lives of a billion people and counting ought to have a more finely wrought sense of human nature, a deeper appreciation for what is lost when a new technology becomes part of our lives as well as what is gained. That would certainly be nice, but like the nervous and insecure, people with finely wrought sensibilities rarely build companies like Facebook. And maybe it doesn’t matter. Over the past decade, humanity hasn’t just adopted Facebook; we’ve fallen on it like starving people who have been waiting for it our entire lives, as if it were the last missing piece of our social infrastructure as a species. Pundits are free to wring their hands and mumble their nuances on Ello. Judging by their behavior, most people don’t care.

Universal Internet access has, like Facebook, some of the feel of manifest destiny. The tipping point is already past, digital threads are woven too deeply into human life. We can’t go back, only forward. And if someone’s going to make it happen, it might as well be Zuckerberg. Talking to him, you have an eerie sense that as crude as his methods sometimes are, he is among those who will win the future—he is among the technologists who have replaced poets as, in Shelley’s phrase, the unacknowledged legislators of the world. “We feel like this is just an important thing for the world,” Zuckerberg says, “and there are no steps that are clear steps to make this an awesome business or to have it fully rolled out across the world, but I’m pretty confident we can do it. I’m pretty confident it’s going to be a good thing.”

The real difference between Facebook’s first decade and its second may be that when Zuckerberg started out, he genuinely seems not to have realized how big Facebook was going to get, and how much power he had. “If you asked me in the beginning what would happen in our first decade,” he says, “I would have been pretty off.” He under-estimated himself. It was a rare mistake. He’s unlikely to make it again.

This story originally appeared in the Dec. 15 issue of TIME .

Clarification: The Financial Times says it was never asked to make a correction and disputes that Gates was misquoted.

Your browser is out of date. Please update your browser at http://update.microsoft.com

Tech, Media & Entertainment

Mark Zuckerberg Leadership Style (Guide)

Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership style has made him a widely recognized figure in the tech world . As the founder and CEO of Facebook, he has demonstrated visionary leadership and exceptional management skills . His innovative approach has not only shaped the success of Facebook but has also influenced the way other companies operate in the industry.

Zuckerberg’s leadership style can be described as that of a visionary leader who has played a significant role in shaping the tech world . With his forward-thinking mindset, he consistently sets long-term goals for Facebook, pushing the boundaries of innovation and challenging the status quo. His ability to anticipate industry trends and embrace emerging technologies has enabled Facebook to stay ahead of the curve.

Key Takeaways:

• Mark Zuckerberg is a visionary leader who has shaped the tech world through his innovative approach.
• His management skills have been instrumental in the success of Facebook.
• Zuckerberg’s forward-thinking mindset and long-term goals drive the company’s innovation .
• He prioritizes data-driven decision-making to stay ahead of the competition.
• Team building and collaboration are essential elements of Zuckerberg’s leadership approach .

Table of Contents

Mark Zuckerberg’s Autocratic Leadership Style: A Closer Look at Decision-Making

Mark Zuckerberg, the renowned CEO of Facebook, is widely recognized for his distinctive autocratic leadership style . Known for making independent decisions and setting ambitious goals without much guidance, Zuckerberg takes a highly assertive approach to leadership.

One of the key aspects of Zuckerberg’s autocratic leadership style is his reliance on data-driven decision-making . He places great importance on analyzing data to inform his choices and drive the direction of Facebook. By basing his decisions on factual evidence, Zuckerberg aims to make informed choices that are grounded in data and analysis.

This autocratic management approach may have its critics, but it has undoubtedly contributed to Facebook’s ability to remain ahead of the competition and deliver innovative solutions in the dynamic tech industry . Zuckerberg’s decisive nature and willingness to take risks have allowed Facebook to maintain its position as a global leader.

To better understand Zuckerberg’s leadership style, it is important to explore his decision-making process in more detail. By closely examining his autocratic approach, we can gain valuable insights into how he shapes the direction of Facebook and drives the company’s success.

Autocratic Decision-Making Process

Zuckerberg’s autocratic decision-making process is characterized by his ability to make independent choices without seeking extensive input or consensus from others. As the CEO and founder of Facebook, he has the ultimate decision-making authority, allowing him to set the direction for the company.

This autocratic leadership style enables Zuckerberg to act swiftly and assertively, ensuring that critical decisions are made efficiently. By relying on his own judgment and expertise, he is able to set ambitious goals and drive Facebook’s growth.

However, it is important to note that Zuckerberg also values data and analysis in his decision-making process. He leverages data to gain insights into user behavior, market trends, and emerging technologies. This data-driven approach helps him make strategic decisions that align with Facebook’s long-term objectives and address the evolving needs of its users.

While some may argue that an autocratic leadership style can stifle creativity and limit the input of others, Zuckerberg’s track record of success speaks volumes. By combining his assertiveness with a data-driven mindset, he has been able to navigate the complexities of the tech industry and lead Facebook to unprecedented heights.

The Impact of Autocratic Leadership on Facebook

Zuckerberg’s autocratic leadership style has had a profound impact on the growth and success of Facebook. By making independent decisions and setting ambitious goals, he has propelled the company to become one of the most influential players in the tech industry .

This autocratic management approach has enabled Facebook to stay ahead of its competitors and continue delivering innovative solutions to its global user base. By relying on data and analysis, Zuckerberg ensures that the decisions he makes are grounded in a comprehensive understanding of the market and user preferences.

However, it is essential to recognize that an autocratic leadership style does have its limitations. The emphasis on independent decision-making may result in a lack of diverse perspectives and reduced employee engagement. Therefore, it is crucial for Zuckerberg to balance his autocratic tendencies with fostering an environment that encourages collaboration and open communication.

In conclusion, Mark Zuckerberg’s autocratic leadership style, driven by data-driven decision-making , has been instrumental in Facebook’s success. While this management approach may have its drawbacks, its positive impact on the company’s growth and innovation cannot be denied. Zuckerberg’s ability to make bold decisions and set ambitious goals has solidified Facebook’s position as a leader in the tech industry.

Visionary Leadership: Mark Zuckerberg’s Long-Term Goals and Innovation

Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership style can be characterized as visionary. He possesses a clear long-term vision for Facebook and is unafraid to take risks in order to achieve it. Zuckerberg’s unwavering focus on innovation and his investment in technologies that can propel Facebook toward its goals have allowed the company to flourish in an ever-evolving tech landscape.

As a visionary leader , Zuckerberg understands the importance of anticipating future trends and creating a sustainable future for Facebook. He recognizes that long-term goals are essential not only for success but also for staying ahead in the highly competitive tech industry. By embracing innovation and constantly pushing the boundaries, Zuckerberg ensures that Facebook remains at the forefront of technological advancements.

One of Zuckerberg’s notable long-term goals is to connect the world and bridge the digital divide. Through initiatives such as internet.org, Facebook aims to provide access to internet services in underserved areas, opening up new opportunities for education, communication, and economic growth. By pursuing such ambitious goals, Zuckerberg showcases his commitment to creating a positive impact on a global scale.

Innovation is at the core of Zuckerberg’s leadership approach . He encourages a culture of creativity and forward-thinking within Facebook, empowering employees to explore new ideas and experiment. Zuckerberg believes in the transformative power of technology and its ability to bring about positive change in society. This ethos drives him to constantly seek innovative solutions, whether it’s through Facebook’s development of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, or other emerging technologies.

Mark Zuckerberg’s visionary leadership style, coupled with his focus on long-term goals and innovation, has propelled Facebook to become one of the most influential companies in the world. By staying true to his vision and embracing technological advancements, Zuckerberg has not only shaped the trajectory of Facebook but has also left a lasting legacy in the tech industry.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Data-Driven Approach to Leadership

Mark Zuckerberg is widely recognized for his analytical leadership style and data-driven decision-making approach. By prioritizing data analysis, he ensures that his management decisions are backed by concrete evidence and insights. This analytical mindset enables Zuckerberg to identify emerging trends, anticipate user needs, and steer Facebook towards strategic growth.

Through the use of extensive data analysis, Zuckerberg can gain a deep understanding of user behavior and preferences. This empowers him to make informed decisions that align with user expectations and drive the company’s success. By leveraging data, Zuckerberg ensures that Facebook remains a leader in the highly competitive tech industry.

One example of Zuckerberg’s data-driven approach can be seen in Facebook’s advertising strategy. Through the meticulous analysis of user data, Facebook is able to refine its targeting algorithms and deliver personalized advertisements to its users. This not only improves the user experience but also maximizes the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, leading to increased revenue for the company.

Another illustration of Zuckerberg’s analytical leadership can be observed in Facebook’s product development process. By conducting extensive user research and analyzing feedback, Zuckerberg can identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to enhance Facebook’s products and services. This enables the company to stay ahead of the curve and continuously innovate in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

Benefits of Zuckerberg’s Data-Driven Leadership

Zuckerberg’s data-driven approach provides several benefits for Facebook and its stakeholders:

• Data-backed decisions: The use of data ensures that decisions are based on objective insights rather than subjective opinions, increasing the likelihood of success.
• Improved user experience: By analyzing user data, Facebook can optimize its platform to meet the evolving needs and preferences of its users, resulting in a more satisfying experience.
• Enhanced strategic planning: Data-driven decisions enable Zuckerberg to create long-term strategies that are grounded in real-time market trends and user behavior, allowing Facebook to adapt and thrive.
• Effective resource allocation: By analyzing data, Zuckerberg can allocate resources more efficiently, optimizing the allocation of time, money, and talent for maximum impact.

Zuckerberg’s data-driven approach demonstrates the importance of leveraging analytics in leadership. By harnessing the power of data, he has propelled Facebook to become one of the most influential companies in the world, setting a benchmark for analytical leadership in the tech industry.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Focus on Team Building and Collaboration

Team building and collaboration are integral aspects of Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership approach at Facebook. Recognizing the importance of these elements in achieving success, he fosters an environment that encourages open communication, idea sharing, and diverse perspectives within the team.

Zuckerberg believes that a strong and cohesive team can accomplish more than any individual working in isolation. By promoting collaboration, he empowers his team members to leverage their unique expertise and contribute to the collective goal of driving innovation and staying ahead in the competitive tech industry.

One of the ways Zuckerberg encourages collaboration is through cross-functional projects and initiatives. He brings together individuals from different departments and teams, facilitating the exchange of ideas and knowledge. This not only breaks down silos but also enhances creativity and problem-solving capabilities.

The Benefits of Team Building and Collaboration at Facebook

• Enhanced creativity: Collaboration fosters a diverse range of perspectives, sparking innovative ideas and solutions.
• Improved communication: Open lines of communication enable seamless information sharing, leading to better understanding and alignment among team members.
• Increased employee engagement: When employees feel heard, valued, and included in the decision-making process, they are more motivated and engaged in their work.
• Strengthened relationships: Team building activities and collaborative projects create opportunities for team members to build trust, develop stronger relationships, and foster a sense of camaraderie.
• Accelerated problem-solving: Collaboration allows teams to leverage diverse skill sets and knowledge, facilitating quicker and more effective problem-solving.

Through a focus on team building and collaboration, Mark Zuckerberg ensures that Facebook remains a dynamic and adaptable organization. By harnessing the collective intelligence and creativity of his team, he drives continuous improvement and delivers innovative solutions that shape the future of the tech industry.

Conclusion: Mark Zuckerberg’s Leadership Style and the Legacy of Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg’s distinctive leadership style has had a profound impact on the tech industry and the incredible success of Facebook. His visionary approach, data-driven decision-making, and unwavering focus on innovation have propelled Facebook to become one of the most influential companies in the world. Despite criticisms of his autocratic leadership style, there is no denying the lasting legacy that Zuckerberg has created through his exceptional leadership.

Under Zuckerberg’s guidance, Facebook has revolutionized how we connect and communicate, leaving an indelible mark on the tech industry. His visionary mindset has allowed him to anticipate trends and foresee the future needs of users, enabling Facebook to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving landscape. By embracing a data-driven approach, Zuckerberg ensures that Facebook continues to thrive and remains a leader in the industry.

Beyond his expertise in technology, Zuckerberg also recognizes the importance of fostering teamwork and collaboration. By creating an environment of open communication and encouraging innovation from the team, he cultivates a culture of continuous improvement within Facebook. This collaborative approach has contributed to the company’s ability to adapt to changing market conditions and drive ongoing success.

In conclusion, Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership style, marked by vision, data-driven decision-making, and a focus on innovation, has left an undeniable legacy in the tech industry. His unwavering commitment to pushing boundaries and creating groundbreaking solutions has propelled Facebook to its current influential position. While his leadership may have faced criticism, the impact he has made through his leadership style will be felt for years to come.

What is Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership style?

How does mark zuckerberg make decisions, what is the long-term vision of mark zuckerberg for facebook, how does mark zuckerberg use data in his leadership approach, how does mark zuckerberg promote teamwork and collaboration, what is the impact of mark zuckerberg’s leadership style on facebook, related posts.

Jellylicious Spins: Exploring Online Slot Laws and Sticky Themes

Medieval Majesty: Exploring the Allure of European Medieval-themed Slot Games

Mark Zuckerberg: How to Build the Future | Summary and Q&A

In this interview with Mark Zuckerberg, the conversation covers various aspects of building Facebook and the principles behind it. Zuckerberg discusses the early days of Facebook, the decision to turn it into a company, and the importance of solving real-world problems. He emphasizes the need for companies to be learning organizations and adapt quickly. The discussion also touches on Facebook's focus on connectivity, AI, and the potential of virtual and augmented reality. Zuckerberg shares advice on hiring and talent acquisition, as well as the significance of taking risks in a rapidly changing world.

• Zuckerberg started Facebook as a college project to connect students at Harvard, not expecting it to become a company. It grew rapidly as users wanted to connect.
• Turning down Yahoo's $1 billion acquisition offer was a pivotal moment. Many early employees left, but growth after launching News Feed validated the decision.
• Facebook focused on learning and iteration, empowering engineers to try new ideas. This culture of testing and data-driven development was key.
• Hiring for raw talent over experience, and providing opportunities for people to take on new roles allowed Facebook to build a strong team.
• Zuckerberg is excited about future transformations in connectivity, AI, and augmented/virtual reality computing platforms over the next 10-20 years.

Questions & Answers:

Q: what motivated you to start facebook in the early days.

A: I've always been fascinated by people and their interactions. In college, I studied psychology and computer science, which helped me understand the importance of human connections. When I looked at the internet in 2004, it lacked a platform for people to understand and connect with each other, which inspired me to build Facebook.

Q: Did you envision Facebook as a company when you first started it?

A: No, when I built the first version of Facebook at Harvard, it was primarily to fulfill a need for my friends and me. We didn't set out to create a company; it was more about building something useful for our school community.

Q: What factors made Facebook different from your earlier projects and enabled it to become the company it is today?

A: Facebook's success stemmed from its sustained growth and user engagement. While previous projects served their purposes and concluded, Facebook continued to evolve and meet the needs of users. We followed what people wanted and expanded accordingly.

Q: What advice would you give to aspiring product builders?

A: Start by identifying a problem you're passionate about solving in the world. Building a successful company often begins with addressing a specific issue rather than just wanting to create a business for the sake of it.

Q: Can you share a low point in Facebook's early history and how you dealt with it?

A: One challenging moment was when Yahoo offered to buy Facebook for a substantial sum. It forced us to reevaluate our goals and whether we could create something more meaningful than what was being offered. We chose to turn down the offer, which caused some turmoil within the company.

Q: Were there times when you regretted turning down Yahoo's offer?

A: Initially, there was uncertainty, but shortly after, our rapid growth made it clear that declining the offer was the right decision. However, there have been other challenging decisions since then that were even more difficult.

Q: How do you make decisions about what to build and when to make significant changes within Facebook?

A: We prioritize learning quickly and efficiently. We use data and feedback to identify problems and test hypotheses. It's crucial to iterate and learn from how people use the platform, which informs our decisions.

Q: How did Facebook's "growth group" contribute to its rapid expansion, and would you recommend such a group to other companies?

A: The growth group at Facebook played a pivotal role in our rapid expansion. It focused on using data and experimentation to drive user growth. I'd recommend it for companies aiming to grow efficiently by leveraging their product's potential for viral adoption.

Q: How do you approach hiring and assessing talent, especially when experience may not be the primary factor?

A: We look for raw talent and potential, not just prior experience. People who are passionate and have shown their skills in various ways, such as side projects, can excel. We believe in creating opportunities for individuals to grow within the company.

Q: What excites you the most about the future, and how do you see Facebook's role in it?

A: Three main areas excite me: connectivity (bringing more people online), AI (unlocking potential across various domains), and virtual/augmented reality (transforming human experiences). Facebook aims to play a significant role in these transformations.

Q: What advice from Peter Thiel has influenced your approach to entrepreneurship?

A: Peter Thiel's advice about taking risks in a rapidly changing world has stuck with me. He emphasized that, in such a dynamic environment, the biggest risk one can take is to avoid taking any risks at all. It's crucial to embrace change and innovation.

Zuckerberg emphasizes starting with solving a problem you care about, not deciding upfront you want to start a company; continually learning and experimenting to evolve a product; focusing on hiring talented people and giving them opportunities to grow; and taking risks, since the biggest risk is not taking any risks in a fast-changing world. His approach of caring about connecting people and learning from user data enabled Facebook's emergence from a simple college directory to a global platform.

Share Your Excitement

Ready to highlight and find good content?

Glasp is a social web highlighter that people can highlight and organize quotes and thoughts from the web, and access other like-minded people’s learning.

The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Workweek and Lifestyle Design Blog. Tim is an author of 5 #1 NYT/WSJ bestsellers, investor (FB, Uber, Twitter, 50+ more), and host of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast (400M+ downloads)

The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Mark Zuckerberg on Long-Term Strategy, Business and Parenting Principles, Personal Energy Management, Building the Metaverse, Seeking Awe, the Role of Religion, Solving Deep Technical Challenges (e.g., AR), and More (#582)

Share this:, join 1.5m+ subscribers and receive exclusive tools, tips, and resources sent directly by tim:.

Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Mark Zuckerberg ( FB / IG ), the founder, chairman, and CEO of Meta , which he originally founded as Facebook in 2004. Mark is responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for the company. In October 2021, Facebook rebranded to Meta to reflect all of its products and services across its family of apps and a focus on developing social experiences for the metaverse—moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology.

Mark is also the co-founder and co-CEO of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative with his wife Priscilla, which is leveraging technology to help solve some of the world’s toughest challenges—including supporting the science and technology that will make it possible to cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of the twenty-first century.

Mark studied computer science at Harvard University before moving to Palo Alto, California, in 2004.

Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Overcast , Podcast Addict , Pocket Casts , Stitcher , Castbox , Google Podcasts , Amazon Music ,  or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the video on YouTube here .

DUE TO SOME HEADACHES IN THE PAST, PLEASE NOTE LEGAL CONDITIONS: Tim Ferriss owns the copyright in and to all content in and transcripts of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, with all rights reserved, as well as his right of publicity. WHAT YOU’RE WELCOME TO DO: You are welcome to share the below transcript (up to 500 words but not more) in media articles (e.g., The New York Times, LA Times, The Guardian), on your personal website, in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., Medium), and/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided that you include attribution to “The Tim Ferriss Show” and link back to the tim.blog/podcast URL. For the sake of clarity, media outlets with advertising models are permitted to use excerpts from the transcript per the above. WHAT IS NOT ALLOWED: No one is authorized to copy any portion of the podcast content or use Tim Ferriss’ name, image or likeness for any commercial purpose or use, including without limitation inclusion in any books, e-books, book summaries or synopses, or on a commercial website or social media site (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) that offers or promotes your or another’s products or services. For the sake of clarity, media outlets are permitted to use photos of Tim Ferriss from the media room on tim.blog or (obviously) license photos of Tim Ferriss from Getty Images, etc.

Tim Ferriss: Mark, nice to see you. Welcome to the show. Thanks for making the time.

Mark Zuckerberg: Yeah, thanks for having me on. I’m looking forward to this.

Tim Ferriss: You’ve had a very, very busy week and I imagine most weeks are very busy. Perhaps this week, busier than some. But before we get to, perhaps, current day, I wanted to flash back just a little bit. In the course of doing research for this conversation, I chanced upon fencing. Now, fencing, I had seen in connection with your name, but I had no idea that you had been as competitive as you had been. I was hoping you could just describe a little bit your involvement with fencing. And for people who don’t know, what makes fencing interesting or what made it interesting to you? I have follow-up questions, but I have taken two fencing instructional lessons. This is maybe 10 years ago and was inspired to do so because of the writing of Bruce Lee, of all things. But could you just describe your background with fencing and how you ended up competing?

Mark Zuckerberg: This is probably one of the more interesting places to start an interview that I’ve ever done. I fenced competitively when I was in high school. It’s not something I did since I was like a little kid or something like that. But I’ve always loved sports and just being active. I like problems that you can solve intellectually, but I also just think managing your energy and being out there and being physical, it’s just always been a really important part of my life. So I was looking for a sport that would do this in the winter in high school. 

I did a bunch of running. So I did cross country, and I did tennis as well. So I started doing fencing. And I didn’t do it competitively for a super long period of time, but the thing that I loved about it is it’s obviously very physical and cardio taxing, just being on your feet and bouncing around. But it’s also very, very mental. I have these memories when I was in my high school chemistry classes of writing out sequences of moves that I wanted to try when I was doing bouts later after school that day and different things that you can do to win in multiple ways.

Basically, try to catch people off guard in one position. It’s like, “Okay, if they do power you, then you’re still in a better position. You can get them on the left or something.” Or if they don’t, then you get the touch. I found it to be a very intellectual, but a good sport. I was never that good at it. I did it competitively. Went to some state competitions and stuff like that. But I don’t think I would’ve been good enough to do it at college, for example. But mostly, it’s a fun thing to do.

Tim Ferriss: So the closest experience that I have is with kendo. I lived in Japan for a period of time, and I did some kendo. I think it shares quite a bit in common with fencing. Of course, the techniques are quite different. The slashing movements predominate in kendo. Although you are allowed to stab to the throat if you’re past a certain age, which is all a separate matter. But the idea of, as they might say in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, this sort of position before submission is an interesting one, right? So even if your first attempt fails, you’re in a superior position to execute on your next move.

It’s always struck me that as much as people think of you as someone who studies or even predicts or looks at trend lines into the future, it seems like you have quite a background in studying the past. And that’s where I wanted to go next, which was classics. It seems like you’ve spent quite a bit of time studying classics. I was wondering if there are any books or any figures who stick out to you from that chapter in your life? Maybe that chapter continues to this day, but if you could speak to that. I figured we’ll use that as a segue to other things.

Mark Zuckerberg: I loved classics. I picked it up in high school as well. I started studying Latin because I was so bad at speaking French and Spanish. I’m very interested in languages overall, but the whole kind of thinking on your feet and understanding really quickly. I process things more methodically. Latin was more my style because you don’t have to speak it. You can just read it at whatever kind of pace makes sense. And then from there I got into Greek. I actually thought that when I went to college, my plan was to be a classics major.

It turned out I took no classics courses at Harvard. I ended up doing psychology and computer science were the two areas that I focused on, but I just loved the discipline of classics so much and the history. I mean, philosophically, it is sort of the underpinning of, kind of, Western thought. I think it’s super interesting. But I’ve also just been very interested in basically people who shape the way we live. 

So the historical figures who I like learning about—I’d say there’s like a set of people like inventors—you know, people who just create things and change the world through that. But I’m also very interested in historical figures who try to invent or usher in new ways for people to live. So I always thought Augustus was a very interesting historical figure. And I mean, one of the things—I mean, he’s controversial for a lot of reasons, and you can debate all the good and bad, but one of the things I thought was just really always stuck with me about what he did was when he basically stopped the wars, at the time in history, there wasn’t really a concept of perpetual peace. 

The concept of peace that they had at the time was like this is just the temporary period during which your enemies are too weak to fight you, but they’re going to come back. And he basically ushered in this notion of actually trying to convert a lot of the military towards other trades, because he’s like, “All right. No, we’re trying to be more peaceful. We want to build a more positive sum economy. Let’s do this in a way where we can get people doing more productive things.” I always thought that was just a really interesting historical thing.

And in some ways has parallels today to some of the work that I think is going on in the tech industry around the whole creator economy. If you just think about how many people today basically do jobs that they have to that they might not actually like that much, but they’re supporting themselves compared to where I think and hope that the world is going, which is just a much more robust creative economy where way more people can do things that are intellectually or physically interesting to them. And in doing so build up communities around that and have enough monetization and economy around that to support that.

That to me is the modern version of how do you upgrade the way that people live and work to fulfill human potential? I think there are a lot of interesting lessons from the past. I think you can also read into it too much, but I really enjoyed it when I studied it.

Tim Ferriss: Where I’m going here across a broad spectrum is trying to—and we are going to talk about the creator economy and the potential of that, and also questions around it. Right now, what I’m hoping to learn more about are some of the influences, and the influences can take many forms. One would be books. I want to ask, this is from a profile in The New Yorker from 2010. And I remember this because I noticed it before I read it in The New Yorker at the time, which was for a period of time, I think the only book that was on your profile on Facebook was Ender’s Game .

Mark Zuckerberg: It’s a great book.

Tim Ferriss: It is a great book. It was one of my favorites. And I was hoping you could explain why Ender’s Game , and then if there are any other books that you have, in particular, that come to mind, or you’ve reread or, say, gifted to other people, what those might be? But if we could start with Ender’s Game , since it is also a personal favorite of mine, I’d love to know: why Ender’s Game ?

Mark Zuckerberg: I actually don’t think it has any unique significance. So I’m surprised to hear that it was the only thing on my profile, but I do love it. It’s a great book. I think that kind of science fiction, not just exploring certain technologies, but it’s also a very compelling story and has good moral lessons. There are parts of the technology and things in it like the Ansible for faster than light communication across the galaxy that we had a project at our company that we had codenamed that. We’re all focused on communication. I can’t really speak to it. I’m not actually sure why it was the only thing on my profile.

Tim Ferriss: Just the only book. Not the only thing.

Mark Zuckerberg: I don’t think it has some kind of unique significance in my life, but I love science fiction. I mean, I have spent a lot of time reading that. I think it’s often a good way to understand what’s possible. In recent years, the last decade as I’ve gotten more into virtual and augmented reality, and actually starting to build some of these things more, I’ve certainly spent a lot of time reading the science fiction, going back and revisiting a bunch of the books around that. It’s really fascinating to me to see what people predict and what the sociological phenomena that people predict around this stuff as well.

Tim Ferriss: Are there any books in particular, writers in particular? I mean, one who comes to mind for me would be Ted Chiang, who’s written a number of short story collections like Exhalation , which seem to include a lot of potentials right around the corner, near future speculative fiction. Any books come to mind that you’ve done just in the course of reading in the last few years, whether related to VR/AR or otherwise?

Mark Zuckerberg: There’s some that are just classics around this, right? I mean, I think at this point, anyone who’s interested in this space would read Ready Player One and Snow Crash . I think Rainbow’s End is one that is maybe not as commonly cited, but I think is maybe the augmented reality sort of equivalent of some of the seminal works that talk about virtual reality.

One of the things that I think is pretty interesting about all of these is that they sort of posit that the world is in some sort of dystopian state. And that I think is very different from how I think about this. I think that there are all these reasons why it is very valuable for people to be able to be present in another place no matter what their situation is.

I laugh about this sometimes when— My family, we love going down to Kauai and it’s beautiful there, and we’ll be out there and I’ll— I love surfing. I love doing a lot of stuff, but I also love being in VR when I’m there too. So it’s obviously, that’s not some kind of dystopian thing. But I think that just if you look at equalizing opportunity across the world, you don’t have to be in some kind of dystopian situation to want to be present with another person who you care about or an opportunity that’s better in another place.

That to me always struck me as a very interesting theme of that science fiction. But in terms of exploring sociologically and technologically what’s going to happen, I’ve always found it pretty fascinating.

Tim Ferriss: Let’s talk about long-term planning and long-term bets for a second. I find you particularly interesting in this respect because you’re a founder/CEO with a lot of founder-driven control. You’re, in a sense, one of the last of a generation, and you can make long-term bets. I know when we were chatting, I guess last week a bit, you mentioned having a—correct me if I’m wrong—but like a 15-year roadmap for metaverse. Right? What I’d love to ask you is how you manage, say, the short term or the intermediate term within the company with employees, right? Because if you look at, say, Instagram, WhatsApp, the bets paid off. But at the time there’s a lot of scrutiny.

The media sort of had a field day and by and large were wrong. But I’m wondering since those types of bets are not necessarily obvious in the moment to everyone involved, how do you think about managing internally when you are making these long term bets?

Mark Zuckerberg: Yeah, it’s hard. I don’t think that there’s just one way to do it. People are psychologically much more interested and capable of focusing on a long-term outcome when they feel secure in the near term. So when there’s a lot of near-term thrash or prospects don’t look good or the market is down overall, even if that’s not specific to your company, even if it’s a kind of broader thing, I think that definitely strains people’s time horizons.

But good leadership is you try to get people excited about where you’re going. You obviously can’t just ignore the short term. There’s a lot of stuff that we need to get done there. At this point, it’s a pretty big company. I mean, as one of our board members says, “We need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time,” which is probably a simplification.

But one of the things that I’ve personally learned over the last 18 years of running the company is—I remember when I was getting started, feeling like you weren’t understood kind of feels bad. I think that there’s a normal human impulse, which is you want to be understood. I think that’s partially why people want to express themselves and why communication is so important—people at some level have this intrinsic desire to be understood and belong and feel like they belong with the people around them.

Obviously, being in a state where something that you’re trying to do is fundamentally misunderstood or that people don’t believe in it, can be tough. But after going through a bunch of these cycles, I actually feel like I’ve trained myself to see it the opposite way, which is if I’m doing something that feels too well understood for too long, then I feel like I’m just being complacent. After I’ve gone through a bunch of these different cycles, whether it’s—you know, a lot of things that are just not controversial today, but at the time people thought were crazy. Taking the service initially from being a college website to not, buying Instagram or WhatsApp, which were billions of dollars for the acquisitions, but at the time people were like, “What?” I remember, I think it was—I don’t know if it was Jon Stewart or Colbert—but they did a segment that was making fun of the Instagram acquisition. It was like, “What? You bought Instagram for a billion dollars? Of money? Are you kidding?”

So I think some of these things, it’s like, you just— you kind of go through a bunch of these and you have the conviction to kind of push back on the world a little bit and say, “Okay. We’re going to get through this and come out 18 months, 24 months, with something that we believe in.” And after that happens a few times, you understand that could happen. Most people still will get more of these bets wrong than right.

I think it’s obviously very important to not get too overconfident with this. But at this point, I kind of feel like if people fully feel like they understand what we are as a company and what we’re doing, then I’m not pushing it hard enough. Now I’m at the point where, like, that feels bad to me.

So I want to push us into the zone, which is, “Okay, let’s constantly be doing something that can be doubted.” Because if we’re not, then what are we doing? We have this huge opportunity to be able to do exciting things and help invent things and create things for the world. If it’s obvious to everyone that we’re going to be able to do each of the things that we’re working on, then I don’t feel like we’re making the most of what we need to do. So I’m not sure that answers the original question around internally how do you get people through it, but I actually think a lot of this how do you get an organization of a hundred thousand people through something is about managing your own psychology and about managing your team’s psychology. 

Tim Ferriss: For sure.

Mark Zuckerberg: One of the things that I’ve always found is you can pretty much, I think, get an organization and a team through almost any challenge as long as you can maintain good cohesion.

It’s the external stuff that doesn’t bother me that much. People can criticize us. If they’re people I respect, I care a lot about that and want to make sure we do better, but it doesn’t make me not sleep at night. When our stock price goes down, that doesn’t make me not sleep at night. When there’s a new competitor, that doesn’t make me not sleep at night. If there’s an issue on my team and there isn’t good cohesion, then I’m not sleeping well until I resolve that.

It goes back to the very first thing we were talking about with fencing. It’s intellectual, and you’re managing your energy. But I think in order to get through these things and build big, long-term things, you need to take care of yourself and you need to take care of your core team. And basically in doing so, you can, I think, lead a pretty large organization through some pretty difficult times to do some pretty awesome stuff. But I think that it’s intellectual, it’s energy, and it’s about kind of training yourself to be uncomfortable.

Tim Ferriss: So let’s talk about the training yourself to be uncomfortable, or to become more comfortable with discomfort. Does anything come to mind just in terms of managing your psychology?

Mark Zuckerberg: For my own psychology, the way that I try to manage this stuff is I wake up in the morning, and you get whatever emails you have of stuff that’s going on in the world. 

So it’s world events, it’s team events, whatever trends we’re seeing across our products. And often in there, there’s a fair amount of bad news. And new things that I need to absorb. One of the things I’ve found just for kind of managing myself is that if I try to just go straight into the day, almost every morning when I wake up and read through my emails and get the news, it’s almost like getting punched with sort of like a ton of new context. And it’s like, “Okay, I need to internalize this.”

So I found that doing something physical and something that’s meditative to take my mind off of it for an hour, so then I can reset and go do work is really important. So that’s why things like foiling or surfing have been really important to me because when you’re out there in the water, it’s pretty hard to focus on anything else. When you’re on the board, you’re focused on making sure you stay on the board and don’t mess something up. Especially if you’re kind of towing or something like that, there’s not a whole lot of downtime.

So I’ve found that for my own performance is significantly better when I have something like that that’s meditative and physical and allows me to output some energy, and then I can come back in, and it’s almost like I’ll have subconsciously settled all of the news that have happened in the world, and it’s like, “Okay. Now, let’s go deal with it.” Now, obviously, if there’s something that’s really an emergency, I’m not going to go do a sport or something, I’ll go deal with it. And obviously part of life is you don’t always get to control your schedule. And that’s kind of how that goes, but when I compare how I do on the days when I get to have some time to soak that in, or to have an outlet versus just like jumping right in, I find I’m often stewing in bad news or something. And then I’m not as productive.

So that’s sort of my own personal way that I try to manage situations like this. But obviously, a key part of this is like having an awesome team, and it’s not primarily about me at this point. It’s a big company, and we have awesome people who are running all these different groups. So I get that what I’m saying kind of how I’ve worked out the system for myself isn’t necessarily something that would work for a lot of other people.

Tim Ferriss: I think that the meditative palate cleanser makes sense though. Especially, if you’re talking about things like foiling, where the consequence of a lapse of attention on what you’re doing has immediate penalties. So it’s regulating, in a sense.

Mark Zuckerberg: Maybe I’m not strong-willed enough or calm enough to just do straight up meditation. I actually need to put myself in a situation where it’s difficult to not focus on that thing. 

Part of this too—I mean, I do think managing energy is an interesting thing. I mean, some of the folks who I work with at the company, I think they say lovingly, but I think that they sometimes refer to my attention as the Eye of Sauron, in that basically, they’re like, “You have this unending amount of energy to go work on something. And if you point that at any given team, you will just burn them.” But at the same time, it’s just kind of managing that. So that way I can manage my own energy and diffuse it well enough, so that way it’s like, okay, I have the thing that I’m focused on that day, and it’s really important to me that I can as often as possible manage my schedule so I can actually focus on the things that I’m naturally thinking about.

I just think the engagement that you get of having, like, an immediate feedback loop around thinking about something and then getting to go talk to the people who are working on this is so much better than going and scheduling a meeting that you’ll have three weeks later when— I mean, maybe the topic will still be important, but it’s not like what’s going on at that time. Getting that balance right, I think, is an important thing for sustainability for the organization as well.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, for sure. We may come back to energy management. We’re going to touch a lot of subjects. We’re going to bounce from the professional to the personal and everything in between. Let’s touch on some things that are kind of top of mind or might be top of mind right now, because I certainly have a lot of questions related to, say, the metaverse and a longer term roadmap. We chatted briefly prior to this about engineering versus science problems.

I’d love to unpack that at some point, but let me ask a really specific question first, and that’s related to kinesthetic feedback and engagement, right? So one thing that struck me about Ready Player One , especially in the cinematic version, so the movie itself is that you have this incredible tactile environment where they’re grabbing objects and interacting with objects, feeling impact, and so on. But then you see them cut to an external shot of someone in a, say, trailer where they wouldn’t actually have that kind of feedback even though they have haptic suits in Ready Player One . What do you see as sort of the roadmap for that type of interactivity?

The more I thought about this, the more I realized, “Well, surface level stimulation may not be quite as immersive as people would hope for.” Do we need to wait for some type of Neuralink type of computer brain interface, where we’re actually stimulating the brain and not simulating, but actually producing, sort of, the perception of kinesthetic engagement? How do you think about the future of that type of hardware and interaction?

Mark Zuckerberg: I think that there’s a pretty long arc there. And it’s also just pretty amazing how good of a sense of presence you can get, even with certain things being pretty raw or out of place, right? The original devices that we had for virtual reality didn’t even have hand presence. They just had basically the headset, and it had this wire. So you kind of had this wire wrapped around your neck because it had to go to a computer to power the thing. And every year, we basically knocked down one or two more barriers. So then we got Quest, which you got rid of the wire, you got it so that now you could run virtual reality at one fiftieth or one one-hundredth of the compute power than what you have in a powerful desktop with a mobile chip on your headset.

Then we got hands. And the first set of hands were basically controllers, but now you’re actually getting actual hand tracking with all 10 fingers being able to be tracked in real time. In the next version that’s coming out, we have sensors for your eyes, so you can make realistic eye contact with someone in virtual reality. And just thinking about to what extent you can do without some of this stuff. I mean, think about all the Zoom calls that you’ve been on over the last couple of years during COVID, there’s no real eye contact over a video conference. Because your cameras are in different places. 

Tim Ferriss: It’s simulated.

Mark Zuckerberg: And even without that it still gets you pretty far. So in VR today, adding realistic eye contact, each of these things, it’s like, you kind of almost don’t realize that you’re missing them. And then when you have them, you’re like, whoa, that’s a really core part of the human experience is being able to make eye contact and hold eye contact with someone and have that gaze.

So I think you’ll just add more things over time. More realistic expressions, more realistic avatars going from kind of cartoon and stylistic and fun to photo realistic and having that work. And then at some point, I think you will get haptics. And the way that we kind of think about haptic glove, for example, screens have resolutions, right? You think about how many pixels are on the screen. And you can actually think about haptics in your hand or anywhere else as basically also having a resolution. It’s like, how many pinpoints can it make across your hand, and your hand is super sensitive. So it can actually, your actual physical hand can have a very high amount of resolution for haptics. But when we first start getting haptics, they’re not going to have that high of resolution, but it’s still going to be amazing. And then every year they’re going to get better and better and better.

So I think that there’s quite a far roadmap on this, which is partially what makes it super exciting, right? It’s like, you can have a realistically, a 15-year roadmap of what is it going to take to deliver the kind of virtual reality presence that you want to be, you know, feel like you’re physically there with another person. At the same time, augmented reality is a whole separate set of problems because now you’re putting a hologram in the real world. So that’s kind of a similar thing there. But being able to just work on a project that’s a 15-year project, where there’s—a lot of it is an engineering problem that you just need to go build, but a lot of it is also unknown, right?

So there’s six or seven key unknowns that we just have multiple teams going out and trying to attack different approaches at that. I just think it’s a fascinating and fun way to make progress. And of course each year you’re intercepting and launching a new product. So I find this to be some of the most exciting work that I’ve ever gotten to be a part of. And I hope that for the rest of my career that I get to engage in more projects that are sort of longer term oriented with this mix of engineering and science and in, kind of, continual milestones. I think it’s just a great way to make progress in the world.

Tim Ferriss: I’d love to ask some more questions about metaverse and also the recent announcement related to Instagram and NFTs. Just to touch on that. And then we’re going to go back and fill in with some backstory and some family questions, if you’re open to that. As I’m looking at the metaverse and have been observing fairly closely Web3 developments and NFTs, and so on in the last handful of years, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about your long-term planning and then how you must think about sort of secondary effects, tertiary effects of these technological advances. And then I’ve also thought about, I think it was Andy Grove who had paired metrics. So he would have sort of a primary outcome metric that they were tracking. And then they would look for kind of correlated impacts that they could track that were undesirable or should be addressed in advance.

And I’ll give you an example. So playing with Oculus, I was very impressed with the technology because I used a very early, I don’t want to say prototype, but version years ago, and the advances are really tremendous. And I had an opportunity to chat with a friend of mine who, unbeknownst to me, at some point, and I’m blanking on the exact game title, but he was something like second in the world or third in the world in mini golf. And that was, I want to say a year, year and a half ago. Now, he’s not even in the top 500. So there’s clearly a large demand for this. The number of users is increasing rapidly and it’s still early. Right?

Mark Zuckerberg: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: It’s really, really early. Now when I used the technology most recently—and I had several ligaments torn on my knee, so I had the experience of actually engaging with it, sitting on a couch, which was fascinating because it was my first time not mapping out sort of the playing area and walking around, so I actually had the ability to test it as somebody who’s sort of mobility restricted, which was amazing—when I came out of the experience, it took a while for my eyes and brain to readjust to sort of the depth perception of objects around me. And I was chatting with this friend, John, he said, “Oh, yeah, it takes about two to three months. And then you adjust completely to that.” And I’m wondering what types of societal changes, maybe physical adaptations, you are tracking as more and more people come online and begin to spend more and more time using, say, VR.

Mark Zuckerberg: The framework that you’re talking about, about having goals and metrics to track those goals and then countermetrics is a really important one that we basically encode into all of our teams across the company. They’re basically things that we think are good if we can enable more connection or more different things across the company, but then there are kind of countermetrics in all these areas that we’re tracking to make sure that we don’t exceed or don’t increase negative effects. 

For VR specifically, the biggest issue that people report is still this feeling of motion sickness. And the basic issue, just to kind of break it down, is your eye— Now eyes are not computers, but you can kind of think about it as a refresh rate. If something changes in the world, it’ll kind of take 5 to 10 milliseconds for different people, for you to sort of recognize that. And if you think about what’s technically happening with VR, basically, you have to render this whole world continuously. And if a person changes their head position or eye position, it expects the image to be different. But then by the time that their saccade is done, which is what it’s called, basically your kind of eye refocusing.

If we haven’t rendered correctly, what you would kind of expect to be in that space, then it creates this real feeling of discomfort over time. It’s not like you miss one frame, and you feel terrible, for most people. But it’s over time, if you’re not doing that efficiently, then that creates this feeling that, it creates like a—it’s a real physical feeling of discomfort. And this is partially why the early versions of the VR headsets needed to be plugged into a computer because in order to be able to render a world that quickly, you needed a lot of computing power. So it’s this tremendous engineering challenge to now be able to do that so much more efficiently that you’re doing that on a mobile chip, which is 1/50th or 1/100th as powerful as the desktop things, but get that to work really well.

I would say that that problem is not fully solved yet, but it’s getting better in every generation, and people aren’t computers and not everyone is the same and people have different sensitivity to this stuff. So some people, if a headset is running at 60 frames per second, that won’t bother them. But other people, at the other end of the spectrum, if a headset is running at 120 frames per second, they may still perceive some glitchiness. And for most people, if you can get to 72 or 90, you’re in pretty good shape. But there are outliers and people are not all the same. And at the end of the day, making this a technology that can be comfortable for basically everyone is going to be a really critical part of making this happen.

So that’s probably the biggest effect that we see. Some of the other stuff, like you mentioned, I think you just need some more kind of a longitudinal study. 

Tim Ferriss: Right.

Mark Zuckerberg: It’s tough to exactly understand all the effects of anything right up front, but you want to be mindful of that and be open to the fact that what you’re doing could have issues and that you want to improve those issues. And we try to research that stuff and try to continuously improve it. But that’s the biggest thing that we’re tracking right now.

Tim Ferriss: And on looking at societal changes, we could look at that for a second and then we’ll come back to Instagram. I’ve been very engaged in watching, say, Axie Infinity as an example, and play to earn in different forms. And it’s been pretty mind boggling to see, for instance, that there are so many players in the Philippines who are earning income, that they can now impact large elections, as a constituent. And I’m wondering how you see this developing, and this is—certainly, Meta is going to be a primary player; there are going to be other players—but if we get to the point where—and please poke holes in this if you have a different view of things—but if we get to a point where there’s almost a universal basic income provided by the broad spectrum of jobs that you can have in the metaverse or online, what do you think some of the societal effects will be of that? It seems to be certainly growing faster than I ever could have imagined, even though a lot of it is maybe not right in my backyard. But it’s certainly on a global level, seems to be expanding really quickly. I’d love to hear you speak to that in any capacity.

Mark Zuckerberg: I don’t interpret this as a universal basic income. I think what we’re actually going to see is just the creation of a lot of different worlds that have different rules. So I think we’ll kind of explore and people will get to spend more time in worlds that there are very different rule sets around. Everything from different physics, literally, to how you can move through the space to different modes of governance. One thing that I think is pretty important and that I hope that we can build into the Horizon platform, it’s the social platform that we’re building, is the idea that anyone can create a space, but then spaces can be nested in other spaces. So you can basically create a building or a store, and then that can be inside a city that someone else creates.

And then there’s the question there of, okay, well, how do you govern that? Who gets to say, and what policies, who can enter it, how do taxes work, what’s the basic business model of that space, what are the design codes around what are you allowed to build there? All these different dimensions. And the physical world is, there’s a lot of it, but it is at the end of the day more finite than what we’re going to have with the virtual world. So not everyone can kind of get to be the mayor of their own virtual space and see how that evolves. But I think part of what we’re going to get to see is you’re going to have, you know, they could be young people in the Philippines or anywhere else around the world, experimenting with basically creating worlds that are not just a single space or an experience but actually like an environment or a polity in a way that other people can kind of be a part of.

And I think that there will be sort of pretty interesting innovation, social—and economic, and governance innovation—as long as this gets designed in a good way. So I guess more than any specific policy idea, I think this could end up being a way to basically explore a lot of different ideas and kind of see which of these different environments that evolve are going to be appealing to people in different ways. I think that’s going to be wild to watch play out. And it’s one of the things that I’m really looking forward to.

Tim Ferriss: Are there any societal shifts or changes, not necessarily catalyzed by Meta, but just that you see coming or plausibly coming that you guys are trying to get ahead of or think about, just in terms of mitigating problems later. Is there anything that comes to mind?

Mark Zuckerberg: I’m not sure if this is exactly what you’re getting at, but one big shift that I think is happening is the rise of distributed work. I don’t view that as a problem, I think it’s good. There’s just a lot of research that shows that people’s opportunities—social, economic, and otherwise—are generally pretty anchored to physically where they are. And I think sometimes people draw this juxtaposition of say, okay, there’s the digital world and the real world. That’s not actually how I think about it. I think that there’s a physical world and a digital world. And the real world is actually both. And increasingly I think people will use these technologies to be able to be present in places that they physically can’t be. And I think that that’s really powerful.

It’s like, we’re doing this podcast and we’re not sitting next to each other physically, but it feels like we’re here, and we’re kind of having a live conversation. And in the future, maybe five years from now, if we were doing this, we’ll have AR glasses and a hologram version of me will be on the couch next to you. And I think that will be even better than what we’re doing right now. So I think that through video chat, you can have moments where you feel present, but I think through things like virtual and augmented reality, when you can have an office and someone can be walking through it as a hologram, even though they’re physically in a different place. I think that you’ll just be able to much more naturally unlock more of the opportunities, both social and economic, and I guess other others as well, of being able to be around people and be present no matter where you actually are.

So people will be free to kind of live where they want, maybe where their family physically is, a country that they grew up in. But they’ll have all the opportunities that will be available around the world. So that I think is awesome. I think it’s one of the most promising things about the future. And one of the things that I’m trying to do is, sort of taking the conversation in a different direction, is we actually recently did this exercise at our company where we were thinking about, okay, we’re coming up on almost a hundred thousand people soon in our company. And we kind of think about our values as a company, as our cultural operating system. How do we get work done well and continue to build the things that we need to build. And a big part of the values, and I’d love to talk through them here—this is actually the first podcast or any public thing that I’ve done where I’ve discussed any of the values. I think it’ll probably be pretty interesting to go through it—but one of them is we rolled out this value called Live in the Future, which is basically about the world is moving towards being distributed first. And both because we think that’s a good trend for how we work, and because we aspire to play a role in building all the technology to enable that through virtual reality, augmented reality, metaverse, software, and infrastructure, and avatars to express yourself, we have the saying that we want people inside the company to eat your own dog food, that use the things that we are building internally as part of how we work, because that’s also, it gets us in a faster feedback loop to make those tools better for everyone else around the world. But that’s one of the six values that we just rolled out. I actually think it might be interesting to go through the others too, but up to you.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, please. Please, let’s go through them, and then I’ll have some questions about them. I’m sure.

Mark Zuckerberg: So some of them we kept, but we’re just changing how we execute them. So one thing that I think our company is pretty well known for is having the value of Move Fast. And I’ve always basically believed that values are only useful if you can legitimately disagree with them. I’ve always thought values like “be honest,” are not that helpful, because of course you have to be honest. I feel bad even needing to write that down. If you have to write that down, then something kind of went wrong. I don’t know any good company that doesn’t focus on honesty or demand that of their employees. So from my perspective, that’s not a useful, if you only get to write down five or six concepts to program into your culture, you want them to be things that good companies can reasonably do differently.

And I think part of this is that good values, you need to be able to give something up in order to get them. So around Move Fast, we’ve always had this question, you can’t just tell people to move fast. The question is: what’s the deal? What are you willing to give up? And famously, it used to be Move Fast and Break Things. And the idea was that we tolerated some amount of bugs in the software in order to encourage people to move quickly. Because moving fast, I think, is the key to learning. You want to increase the iteration cycle so that way you can get feedback from the people you serve quickly, and then incorporate that into the product. So we would literally get into situations where competitors of us would ship once a year, once every six months, and we’d ship code every day. Of course we’re going to learn faster, and we’re going to build something better if you’re shipping something every day. So the question is: what are you willing to give up?

And so it used to be we would tolerate some amount of defects in the product. It got to the point as the company grew that we were producing so many bugs that going back and fixing them was actually slowing us down more than we were speeding up. So I still thought, okay, moving fast, this is still a really important thing. We’ve got to change how we do it. So we kind of evolved to building a somewhat less sexy phrase: Move Fast with Stable Infrastructure. And basically the new bet was we were going to invest disproportionately in building up good infrastructure and abstractions inside our companies. So that way the average engineer who comes here is going to be much faster and more productive at getting things done than in other places. And at a scale of almost a hundred thousand people, what this really means now, companies just add process over time. And it’s all good intention, right?

It’s like people are trying to make sure that we don’t repeat mistakes that we’ve made. So you just add this checklist of things that everyone needs to do before they can ship anything. But most companies don’t have a counter process to that to basically garbage collect and remove processes that are no longer that useful. What I’m really focused on now is just methodically going through and making sure all of the different processes that we’ve built up as a company still serve us well and kind of empowering an effort to go do that. So now that’s kind of what Move Fast is focused on. Should we keep going?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, let’s keep going. Let’s do it. Yeah.

Mark Zuckerberg: The second one is Focus on Long-Term Impact, where on the one hand you want a very fast cycle time to learn quickly. But on the other hand, you want to always keep people focused on the prize and long term. And one thing that’s sort of unfortunate, we had a version of this before that we just said Focus on Impact. But a lot of people, especially as the company grew, interpreted that to mean, do something that would make an impact in this six-month cycle. So that way, when you have your performance review, your manager can point to something good that you did. And you get promoted. And it’s like, oh, God, that’s definitely not what we’re trying to do. Obviously it’s good if you can have an impact in the near term, but you want to be able to have a faster iteration speed to learn quickly, but it’s not always important to kind deliver something every six months.

You want to make sure that you’re focusing and improving things for the long term. So we’ve actually made a bunch of changes to our culture. We changed performance management and the performance cycle that people have from every six months to now it’s just once a year to make it set the timeframes that people have or longer. The next one is a new one that we added that we call Build Awesome Things. And the idea here is that— I actually think that there’s a pretty big difference between things that are valuable and things that are awe inspiring and amazing. And I kind of think that our company has been pretty good at building things that a lot of people use and like.

But for a combination of reasons, we just haven’t focused quite as much until the last few years, especially as we’ve worked on a lot of this metaverse work and virtual reality and things like that, we haven’t focused as much on things that are just awe-inspiring. And I actually think that there’s this balance where you need to do both. You can’t do things that are just all inspiration and no substance. But I also think you can go too far in the other direction of just doing things that are useful, but I think a lot of what the world needs right now is inspiration. There are a lot of things in our lives in modern day that work pretty well, but a lot of what we sort of lack is a positive vision for the future. 

A lot of the metaverse work to me has that level of inspiration and that’s partially why I find it super exciting. We talked about Live in the Future. That’s mostly focused on being a great distributed workforce. From the early days of COVID, I sort of tried to put a flag in the ground that we were going to, even after COVID is done, I think by the end of this decade, hopefully have 50 percent or more of the company working distributed and working remotely. And I still think that that will be awesome and just unlock opportunity, get access to more talent. And then the last two, Be Direct and Respect Your Colleagues, which I find as the company grows— one of my colleagues, Boz, has this saying that we’re in danger of nicing ourselves to death.

I think as organizations grow, there’s a sort of politeness that comes in, where, when you’re just working with a small set of people and you’re comfortable with them, you can actually be a lot more blunt and direct. And Sheryl always says that the amount of progress that we make is directly proportional to the number of hard conversations that we’re willing to have. But as companies grow, I think it’s tougher to give hard feedback. So trying to build that into the cultural operating system, which is, we’re just going to really reward and focus on being direct with each other, I think is a really important thing. 

And then the last one—I realize I’ve been talking for, like, 10 minutes straight at this point, but I think this is the first time I’ve talked about this stuff publicly, so I have a lot of things to say.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s good.

Mark Zuckerberg: When we rebranded the company to Meta, we had this internal question of, what should we call our employees? And someone actually emailed Douglas Hofstadter, the renowned author and thinker. And he wrote back and was like, it should be Metamates. And so internally I felt like if Douglas Hofstadter thinks we should be Metamates, then who am I to disagree with that? So our last value is Meta, Metamates, Me, which is, it’s sort of this adaptation from this old naval saying, “Ship, shipmates, self.” As the company grows, you want to make sure that the people stay focused on the long term and the whole enterprise, and then their teams but also take care of themselves, but I think that sort of having that as a framework is pretty important. I’m happy to go into more detail on any of these, but I also want to be aware that this is quite a long answer and monologue as it is. So wherever you want to go with this.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Let’s pick up on it and then I have up a whole bunch of other things I’d love to get into, but with respect to the values, I’ve seen and looked very closely at the values of, say, Amazon, which have iterated, that Bezos put together, and others. And I think the degree to which values end up the, for lack of a better term, sort of operating system of people at a company varies widely, company to company. And I’d love to know how or if you are—and you mentioned one example of the longer performance review timeframes, right?

Tim Ferriss: Incentivizing these behaviors. You have a team that is determining how to facilitate supporting these values throughout the organization so that they do have more saturation, so to speak.

Mark Zuckerberg: Each of these is basically coupled with an operational effort. So we have a set of work that we do. It’s like Move Fast is the work. Actually, it’s something that I’m pretty engaged in where I will just routinely go and sit down with, largely, engineering leaders, but also folks across the company and ask them, “Okay, well, what is slowing you down?” So in addition to the product reviews they’ll do where we’ll talk about, “What are the decisions we should be making or what should we be investing in?” I think it’s useful to often just sit down with people and have a whole conversation that are like, “All right, what are the things that are basically causing you to move more slowly?”

And then I view a bunch of my job as CEO, but then also we have other people who just work on this, to try to go remove those obstacles. And obviously, we have to do it in a way that helps fit the other goals of the company. So if people are saying, “Hey, it would make me be able to go faster if I just didn’t have to care about this issue,” if that’s an important issue, then obviously we’re not going to just say no. Right? It’s like, “Let’s figure out how we can care about that issue and do this as efficiently as possible.” But you can apply energy, methodically, over a long period of time towards oiling or greasing the wheels in the organization in the direction that you want. And I think you can get it done over time.

I remember, when I was first learning about running an organization, I had this conversation with this guy, Dan Rosensweig, who was the COO of Yahoo at the time. And he’s great. He’s a great person. And he told me this thing that will always stick with me, which is that, “Every organization sucks, but you get to choose the ways in which your organization sucks,” which is maybe the most negative possible way of putting it, but I think it’s basically, if you want to move fast on certain dimensions, you can, but you only get a few things like that.

If you want to optimize moving fast, we can do that. If we want to optimize being distributed first, we can do that, but maybe you get five of these. And we are very focused on operationalizing them and making sure that each of these values is backed up by real work streams that we have or decisions that we make or processes that we make, and when I mentioned changing the performance management tool, for Live in the Future, one of the big things that we’re doing is— and I don’t just want teams to be working distributed and working over video conference. I also want them to be using Workrooms and using their VR headsets to— Workrooms is this product. It’s the VR product that we built for collaboration, and it’s great. It’s early still, but it’s fascinating. It’s like you can— you’re in a meeting and you’re sitting around a table and, even though the fidelity isn’t quite as photorealistic on the avatars yet as, say, the conversation that we’re having now, the fact that you can sit around a table and you can see people’s gestures and you can have a side conversation if there’s 10 people around the table, you can turn to the person next to them and ask them a question, and there could be multiple conversations going on in the room, like a normal room, but obviously you can’t do anything like that over videoconference.

There are a bunch of things like that that actually make it, in some ways, feel more real already than videoconferences, even though the avatars are still very stylized and cartoony. But we just have a rule that everyone who’s in leadership or management should be, basically, doing at least one standing meeting a week in Workrooms. We want to get the feedback loop going that that team now is overwhelmed with feedback on how to get it to be even better, but I think one of the outcomes of this is I think Workrooms is going to probably learn what they need to do to be a great product and a lot faster than a lot of others in the space.

So I think that that’s one way to operationalize these, but you’ve got to operationalize them if you want them to be real. Otherwise, they’re just words that you put on a website somewhere.

Tim Ferriss: I want to say that one thing that came up repeatedly in the course of doing homework for this conversation was how relentlessly product-focused you are. And I heard multiple anecdotes. I don’t know if they’re apocryphal. I can imagine them happening, though, where if you’d be walking down the street and some kid would be like, “Facebook sucks,” and you’d walk over and be like, “Oh, yeah? Well, show me why it sucks. Show me,” and then you’d take 25 notes and the next day, team would get a long list of things from having actually sat down with someone for a half hour, 45 minutes, and having them walk you through their experience. And I do think that— 

Mark Zuckerberg: That’s generally true.

Tim Ferriss: So I’d love to ask a few more questions about just Web3, in general, and then maybe back step for a second to ask you about a number of other facets in your life. With Instagram and NFTs, so I know that Web3 is getting a lot of airtime right now. And I just came from a separate conference where every conversation involved Web3. And it strikes me that Web2, Web3, decentralized, centralized are going to coexist. I mean, I’m no expert, but it seems that people want curation. In many cases, they want trusted third parties. I don’t want to always be my own bank. There are good reasons why I use banks instead of not taking on all those responsibilities myself.

And I’m wondering how, let’s just say in the case of Instagram, some challenges that, perhaps, you foresee. And I can imagine, for instance, if people can turn, hypothetically, posts into NFTs, how that might affect, let’s just say, content moderation and safety precautions and so on if they actually have ownership of their posts. This is a hypothetical that I’m throwing out there, but what type of challenges do you foresee coming up in the near term or in the long term?

Mark Zuckerberg: The one that you just mentioned is, I think, a really fundamental one. At some level, you can make things censorship-resistant, which has a bunch of equities. And there are certainly a lot of people who feel like their expression is restricted online more than they would like, but that also prevents, if you really can’t stop people from expressing things, then how are you going to fight against terrorism or child exploitation or things that people think are really awful, even the people who generally want more stuff to be allowed online?

So really removing the ability for anyone to do any kind of moderation at all, in a broader platform, I think is problematic. I think in something like messaging, we don’t expect the people who run our messaging platforms, whether it’s us or Apple or whoever, to go moderate a message that you send in private, but it’s this distinction between the living room and the town square. If you’re in a space that’s a broader space, then I think that there is a little more need to make sure that things conform to the values that society wants and reducing things that are just really, that I think everyone agrees are bad, like terrorism and child exploitation and bullying and things like that.

Taking a step back on your question around Web3 and NFTs, I come at a lot of this from the perspective of thinking about the metaverse and how to make it more interoperable and a better environment for creators. I do think that there’s an interesting conversation to have around Instagram and Facebook and what to do there, but I tend to think about that as, how can you help bootstrap a creative economy in these 2D social apps that will be much, much bigger once you get to this metaverse vision over time?

I think the reason why operability is so important is because— Imagine this case. We get to a point where, instead of spending three hours a day on video conference calls, you are now spending that same time in, basically, feeling like you’re actually present with someone, either because they’re a hologram on your couch with augmented reality or you’re in virtual reality in something like Workrooms, but a future version of it where you’re actually, you feel like you’re physically there with them, around a table. Okay. So now, in a world where you’re spending a few hours a day doing that, you’re going to care about how you express yourself. Both the avatar—do you show up as a photorealistic version of yourself? Are you a dragon? Are you a stylized version? But a lot of this is going to be like, okay, how do we choose to express ourselves is through the clothing and what we wear and what we put on.

But now, imagine that every app that you go to, anything that you do to express yourself—so you get a sweatshirt, it’s in an app—you can’t actually bring that to another app. That would just be massively stifling for the whole creative economy because now, as a consumer, you’re not going to want to buy a lot of sweatshirts because they’re not going to be that useful, because you can’t bring them between places. And because you’re not going to want to buy that much, it’s going to be less useful for creators, and fewer people are going to be able to make a living, basically, designing these kind of experiences or virtual architecture, virtual clothes, or different things like that.

So the ability to be able to take how you want to express yourself and take your stuff with you between these different experiences, I think, is just a really key technical principle and standards thing to hopefully achieve with the metaverse. So I hope we can get there. And in order to push in that direction, I think it’s helpful to start sooner in things like Instagram and Facebook by supporting the communities that are doing things like NFTs so, that way, you can get to minting, you can get to bringing your stuff around between these different places.

But I do think that the challenges that you’re mentioning where all systems, I think, end up being some combination of some element of decentralized and centralized, I think, actually a lot of new systems just basically create value by decentralizing and creating more opportunity in some area by creating a new tool that a lot of people use. But I think we’ll need to get the balance right and that’s something that— I’m probably more optimistic about the Web3 stuff than most other people who are running these big companies. So I’m trying to push us to be more forward-leaning on that. 

Our fundamental belief is that, if we create more use cases where creators can start to do this stuff, then you’ll get more experimentation and you’ll also just get a bigger creative economy over time, which I think is a huge part of the goal.

Tim Ferriss: It’s going to be exciting to watch. I have to say also that doing a bit of biographical research, looking at your trajectory, having known quite a bit already. It’s incredible to me how much complexity you have learned to grapple with in the sense that, now on a global stage, if there are conflicts or state actors who want to engage or need to engage, Meta is almost always, it would seem, going to be on the playing field in some capacity. It’s just very impressive to me that you have, from the very beginning, reached this point where you’re grappling with so many different layers of complexity. So I just wanted to say that, first and foremost.

Mark Zuckerberg: Well, I appreciate that.

Tim Ferriss: I can’t even imagine. I honestly can’t even imagine. I have enough trouble dealing with the complexity of a tiny team of fewer than 10 people, much less 100,000 and then the global stage. One thing I did want to ask about, I had Noah Feldman on this podcast a long time ago. You put a lot of time and thought into the oversight board. What is your assessment of how that’s going?

Mark Zuckerberg: Well, I think it’s early. One of the things that I think has been really promising is that society needs a network of different institutions that it feels like are legitimate or have some legitimacy for making decisions in order to, basically, accept the decisions and feel like they’re fair. And I think one basic issue that we found ourselves in is that there’s just no way that any single private company should be responsible for arbitrating so many questions of social values between free expression and safety or locking things down to ensure privacy versus making sure that the marketplace can be open and competitive. It’s like these are real issues and there’s equities on all sides and there’s no single decision that any company can make on any of them that, I think, is going to be universally accepted.

So I think, therefore, you really want to not set up a situation where one company has to make a lot of these decisions by themselves. That’s why I wanted to create this oversight board. I recognized that we’re always going to have to be the first line and we’re going to be responsible for making the moderation decisions on our platform, but I thought it was important that we shouldn’t have the final say in the most important decisions and that there was a different body—the judicial analogy is something like a supreme court, although obviously there are all these differences here—but something that people can appeal to and that we can also refer some of the most complicated cases to and that they could make the final and binding judgment on that.

And one of the things that we’ve seen that I think has been interesting is that it does seem like there’s a little bit more acceptance when the oversight board weighs in on something complicated than when we just do it, ourselves. And I think part of that was we put a lot of thought into making sure that the people who are on the oversight board are world renowned, in terms of a focus on human rights, really focused on free expression, as well, because, at the end of the day, these platforms are about giving people a voice, diverse, spanning a large portion of the globe.

Legitimacy isn’t a binary thing. It’s not like either it’s completely rejected or it’s completely accepted by everyone. We were mindful in setting this up and I think the oversight board has also done a good job, itself, in managing its independence. It is a completely independent organization from us and it has to be. And its independence is super important for its continued legitimacy.

Overall, I’d say I’m sort of optimistic about how it’s going, but I think building that sort of trust and legitimacy also takes time. It’s not a thing that you can just turn on in a year and then, all of a sudden, people are like, “Okay, this thing exists. Great.” It’s going to be making decisions, it often overruling us or rebuking us on things and people seeing that we respect its independence and its authority and going and implementing that. That’s, I think, how it basically builds legitimacy over time, but I think, as an institution, I think it’s really important that we have this kind of independent function.

Of course, over time, having clear rules set and democratically elected congress would be, I think, the most useful thing. And we’re getting that, more or less, in different parts of the world. Obviously, it’s a little harder in the United States because— I think the First Amendment is great, so I’m obviously hugely supportive of the First Amendment, but I think that makes it harder for anyone in the United States to basically create or craft different regulations that weigh in on some of these trade-offs. But I do think, over time, there will be a balance that is struck across all of this, and I think that this is all part of that, moving towards that equilibrium.

Tim Ferriss: You mentioned Sheryl earlier. I’d like to come back to Sheryl. So this is a question from a female friend of mine. I’ll just read it as it’s written, and I’d love to hear your thoughts. So, “Mark’s business partnership with Sheryl is legendary. I can’t, off the top of my head, think of another partnership like this—male, female, lasted 15 or so years, 15 plus, still going. Why does it work? How does it work? Why does he think so very few others have such a partnership?” I’ll just add one more. “What has shifted in his life and business, as a result?” I would just love to hear any thoughts on that because it does strike me also as a very unusual partnership that has proven itself with tremendous longevity.

Mark Zuckerberg: Yeah. I think, in a lot of ways, that partnership has defined the growth of the company. First of all, I would give a huge amount of credit for this working to Sheryl. I think she is an amazing person. And if you think about, when she joined the company, I was, like, a kid. She was actually as old as I am now, almost 15 years ago. I was in my early 20s and didn’t know anything about business or running a company or anything like this. And I just think the extraordinary amount of patience that she had, and in a way, is— as a manager of an organization, it’s almost like she raised me like a child, and not just me. I think, like, a lot of the people we have on the team now. So I think she’s exceptional in that way.

One thing that’s interesting about our company is that the business is oddly divorced from the actual product. Most things, it’s like, okay, you build a product and you sell the product. And in our case, I think one of the things that created enough space for someone who has as much energy and is as senior as Sheryl to join is that fact that, in the type of business that we have, the consumer part of what we do is actually somewhat distinct from the advertising and the business part of what we do. There was enough space, I think, in the company to have two people— 

Tim Ferriss: That’s a good point.

Mark Zuckerberg: —who, basically, were primary principals for the company. I’ve debated this with a bunch of other peers and people who’ve created companies. You had a great podcast with Daniel Ek a while ago, towards the beginning of COVID. I’ve had this discussion with him a bunch of times. I was like, “Well…” He’s like, “I just couldn’t do that,” because he says, literally, for Spotify, it’s like they build the business and the content and all that stuff is like one kind of package; whereas, I think we’re sort of uniquely set up where I can focus on the consumer part of what we do and she can focus on all the advertising and building the business. And that just has worked incredibly well over a long period of time and I think will for a long time to come.

I just have a huge amount to learn from her, and I think she probably feels— I guess she feels the same way, but you’d have to ask her.

Tim Ferriss: That’ll be round two. So I do think that the separation of church and state, I mean, that’s probably an overstatement, but the clearly delineated halves of the company, so to speak, lend themselves to that. That’s a really good point. What are her superpowers? I know that may be a strange word to use, but I think of, say, Warren Buffett referring to Charlie Munger, saying he has the best 60-second mind on the planet. They have very complementary skillsets, slightly different views of the world, although highly compatible values. What are Sheryl’s superpowers that come to mind, if any?

Mark Zuckerberg: Well, I think she has a very good combination of IQ and EQ. People either, I think, tend to be more manager or more strategic. And I think she is very unique in being both. I just think that that’s pretty rare. Obviously, if you get someone who’s great at strategy or great at product and they’re not a great manager, that’s great. If you can have someone who’s excellent at one of those things, you hire them every day. I think it’s just exceptionally rare to find people who spike in both of those areas.

But she actually uses a lot of dating analogies. I don’t, but in terms of this one—I was talking to a friend who is single recently, and we were talking about why she was single. And I do just think some people want to go through life with partnerships more than others. I think that there are some people who, they want a co-founder or they want a partner who they can run the thing with and who they can have that experience with on a day-to-day basis, and then there are other people who are like, “Okay. No, I’ll just have a team of five or six people around me and I’ll be the leader, the founder, but I don’t need another person.” I just think that that’s different.

Partnership has always meant a lot to me, both in my personal life and in work. I want people to be on the voyage with me. This isn’t a solo story. That’s, like, a lot of how I derive meaning in life. Again, you’d have to ask her whether she, maybe she’s oriented in a similar way, but I think, to some degree, I think whether partnerships work over time, probably the number one factor in that is whether you want the partnership to work.

Tim Ferriss: Yes, for sure. Or if out of the box, in a sense, you are predisposed to partnership.

Tim Ferriss: But let’s actually use this as a way to move to a question or just—I mean, observation and then a question that I’d love to ask. And we can take it any direction you’d like to. So this is from a mutual friend who said, “One thing that most people don’t know is that his mom is an MD, but she stayed home and never practiced medicine. She worked at the front desk of his dad’s orthodontic business, which was under their home.” And she was wondering how these family dynamics have shaped who you are today and how you parent your own children. So that’s a big question that could go a lot of directions, I recognize, but I’d love to hear you, to speak to that in any way that makes sense.

Mark Zuckerberg: That story is partially true. My mom and dad are both doctors, and my mom did practice for a bit, but it is true that when Randi, my older sister, was born, I guess my mom was having a hard time finding childcare and people who she trusted enough to raise the kids. So she decided that she wanted to spend more time with us, but my dad’s dental office was attached to the house, like you said. So it’s just this magical thing where my parents both worked super hard growing up and were great role models in that way, but also, when I got home from school, I could just throw my backpack on the couch and run downstairs and go see them. And my dad would always be drilling someone’s tooth, and that person was probably not that happy that I came in and was like, “Hey, Dad,” but plenty of stories there.

But they were great parents for us, growing up. They really prioritized family, which is something that I definitely took from them. And I think, not only did I take it from them for myself, but it was really meaningful for me in, basically, who I look for as a partner. And Priscilla, I think, is really focused on this and she obviously has an amazing career and has way more jobs than I do, in addition to being a parent, but the family orientation is a really big deal.

My parents always pushed for— they cared that we achieved and did great in school, but beyond that, they didn’t really care what specific thing we were interested in. They just wanted to expose us to a bunch of things and then, if we were interested in something, then they would try to push us to become excellent at that thing. My mom was never like, “You should go fence.” She was just like, “Sports are good. Go find some sport.” It’s like, “Oh, you like fencing?” It’s like, “All right. Well, let’s get good at that.”

I have three sisters, and they’re all excellent at very different things. Our family is, I think, quite musical, but that’s most expressed through Randi, who is just an excellent musician. And you can kind of go through the different siblings. I guess I got computers.

Tim Ferriss: That seems to have worked out for you.

Mark Zuckerberg: Yeah. I think so. I’d say Donna is the intellectual one, and Elle has always been the most well-rounded and social and athletic of us, which is— As I’ve grown up and I’ve gotten even more into sports, just it’s been really fun just getting to see how much better she is than me at skiing and all these things that we grew up together doing. But no, I think that’s how I hope to raise our kids, is— I care a lot that they’re going to be good at school, but I also care that they can get exposed to a lot of different things and choose the things that they want to do. It’s a fun adventure. One of the things in terms of my parenting is no matter what is going on in the day, I always do bedtime with them. I mean, I guess every once in a while I have to travel. Although with COVID it’s been nice, I haven’t had to travel that much. That’s maybe one silver lining of the pandemic for the last couple of years. But I just take an hour every day, and we read, we sing. I’m reading this book with them now, The Way of the Warrior Kid , which is good. I recommend it.

Tim Ferriss: Wait a second. Is this Jocko?

Mark Zuckerberg: It is.

Tim Ferriss: Jocko Willink, look at that. That’s great.

Mark Zuckerberg: It was recommended to me. Do you know him too?

Tim Ferriss: Jocko’s first ever long-form public interview is on this podcast.

Mark Zuckerberg: There you go.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, so I know Jocko very well.

Mark Zuckerberg: This book was recommended to me by Tobi Lütke, the founder and CEO of Shopify. The girls love it, and now they’ve started training jiu-jitsu. This is this stuff, takes on a life its own. It’s super fun having stuff that we do together every day. Then, I always wrap up the day with them. We have this routine that Max calls the goodnight things. Which is basically every night we go through, I’m like, “All right, what are the things that are most important in life?” They’re health, loving family and friends, and something you’re excited about. What did you do to help someone today? We basically go through each of these things, and it’s like, all right, so health. What did you do to like, make yourself stronger, more fit today? If you get hurt, Max broke her leg skiing once. Let’s go through the parts of your body that still work and that you’re going to be able to use while you’re recovering.

Then, it’s like, okay, loving family and friends. Let’s go through something that you did today with a person who is meaningful to you. And then, I think something you’re excited about, and this is my philosophy on life. I’m just trying to like boil it down for them. I guess the adult version of this is, I think, you have to have something that you’re looking forward to for the future. I think that’s just a really important part of keeping people going with the weight of life. For kids, it tends to be something that they’re excited about tomorrow. More often than not it’s just I’m excited to see mom in the morning or I get to eat Cheerios at breakfast. It’s like, okay, it’s not super inspiring but the right basic idea. Then, every once in a while, it’s something like, Max is like, “I’m going to get ski poles next week.” It’s like, “Okay, that’s like a big milestone.” Or it’s like, “I’m going to lose my first tooth,” or “I can’t wait until I can do jiu-jitsu again.”

Then, the last one I think is probably the most important. Which is, I think especially for our family, especially for these girls who are obviously growing up in a very wealthy family, it’s like, you’re going to do something nice to help someone every day. This is just like an important service orientation, that I think that I just want our family to have, and we just all go around. I tell them something nice that I tried to do to help someone, and they have to tell me something nice that they did to help someone. It could just be like another kid at school or it could be mom or a cousin or something like that. Probably much to their chagrin, I don’t let them go to sleep until they can tell me something nice that they did to help someone that day. That’s probably the best encapsulation of how I think about parenting and the values that I want to try to impart to them.

Tim Ferriss: Thank you for sharing all of that. I want to say a few things. Number one, Tobi, one of my favorite people. I’ve known Tobi—

Mark Zuckerberg: Yeah, he’s great.

Tim Ferriss: —since 2008 or so, and people might be wondering, why am I asking about family? Why am I asking about parenting? Part of the reason I’m asking is because many people who listen to this podcast listen to model, they listen to model people. I think it’s very important to get a holistic picture of how people think about and prioritize things in their lives and manage things in their lives. Because you can end up, if you’re not careful, say, in the realm of business, modeling someone who is from an external perspective, very financially successful, but their family lives, their relationships are in shambles. I do think that the micro can be a reflection of the macro, which is why I like to explore these things. On the point of things that are important in life, man, I love that you’re reading Jocko’s book to your kids. It’s fantastic. Do not—well, actually, no, someday you should roll with Jocko. He is a black belt in jiu-jitsu and is an absolute killer. Probably above your weight class, but worth rolling with nonetheless.

Speaking of things that are important in life, I would love to ask you about—and this is going to be an interesting transition—the sacred and then the secular. For the secular, I have a very specific kind of technical question, but on the sacred, I’d love to ask you what role religion plays in your life, if any, how do you think about that?

Mark Zuckerberg: It’s actually, I think playing an increasing role in recent years. I mean, I was raised Jewish, and I think from the time I went to college or so maybe I wasn’t as focused on it. But I think a few things in the last five or six years have made me a little more focused on it. One is of course family and having kids. You want to have traditions for the kids. A lot of the time it’s like, “Okay, well, here are the things that I did when I was growing up, and that I thought were meaningful.” The ones that are good, you want to do, and the ones that aren’t, you don’t. I just found having that community and values grounding was really valuable. So we are raising our girls to be Jewish, and that’s become a more important part of our lives. Every Friday, pretty much no matter what’s going on, we do Shabbat dinner. Priscilla actually loves this. I mean, she’s basically, it’s sort of a meditative thing for her, but from I think about Tuesday or Wednesday, she starts carving out like an hour or so of the two day to like start cooking the Shabbat dinner. Basically, we have a bunch of friends over. It’s just a real center point to the week. That element, I think, is more cultural.

Then there’s, I’d say for me personally and our company, probably for a lot of people around the world, I mean the last five or six years have been pretty tough. If you just look at how people felt about our company before 2016, if you look at like average sentiment around the company, it’s like, there was almost like never a month when the sentiment was negative. Since 2016, there’s almost never been a month where the net sentiment has been positive. There have been so many social issues that have been kind of brought to the forefront— you know, we talked about this a little bit, in terms of the oversight board and how it’s important that it’s not just like one person or one company making all these decisions, trying to balance these complex social equities. But there just need to be things that are bigger than you in your life. Even though our country has a lot of struggles, I probably believe more in democracy now than I would’ve. I probably didn’t think about it that deeply before, but I just think believing in kind of democracy in our institutions is sort of a bigger force than any individual, I think is sort of a grounding thing.

I think similarly believing that there are things that are bigger than that, like God, I think is also sort of a really grounding thing for me. The more you sort of study the Bible or the Torah or whatever, I mean, there is like just a lot of wisdom in it. In terms of how to live your life, how to think about creation and building. I mean, no matter what you’re doing, no matter how kind of modern or technological it is, I just think that there are interesting lessons. It’s like, at the beginning of the Torah in Genesis, most of, like, the Bible’s basically rules for how to live your life. But it starts with, why does it start in this place of talking about the creation? It starts off with God created people in God’s image. It’s like, well, what does that mean? What does that mean you’re supposed to go do? It starts off talking about creation. It’s how God created all the stuff, it’s like, yeah, I think that there’s like a real interpretation in that, that is kind of personal to me, which is a lot of what we are here to do is create good things in the world.

I think that’s very intrinsic to when I’m having a bad day or a bad month, I just think like there’s something that’s sort of grounded in, it’s like, no, this is like what I think a big part of what we are here to do—build things that make the world better. And I think that is like a fundamental thing that is sort of ancient wisdom. As people face challenges in their lives, and as you think about the next generation, I think that these are both things that tend to ground you and tie you to much longer arcs and traditions. That’s certainly been the case in my life.

Tim Ferriss: You know, I’ve actually gone to a number of Shabbat dinners here in Austin with friends of mine, and it’s made me feel like I have perhaps a ritual deficiency. It’s such an incredibly grounding, nourishing tradition. I mean, outside of the religious context. Also, what you’re saying reminds me, I’m blanking on the book. I think it’s Four Thousand Weeks , but that’s by Oliver Burkeman. There’s a chapter called “Cosmic Insignificance Therapy.” Just the relief that one can feel when their time horizon and what they’re considering sort of spans outside of themselves.

Mark Zuckerberg: That’s the balance, is to understand that there are things that are bigger than you, but what you do still matters.

Tim Ferriss: So I’m going to get to the secular question, and I know we’re running up on time shortly, but in the 2010 New Yorker profile, which, can’t believe everything you read, so we’ll see where we go. Among interests that were cited here, one was eliminating desire. Do you recall having this in your interests? I’m curious about this.

Mark Zuckerberg: Very emo.

Tim Ferriss: It’s very emo.

Mark Zuckerberg: That might have been more of a phase of life.

Tim Ferriss: That was the Mark emo phase. All right. We could—

Mark Zuckerberg: Paint my room black. Yeah, no.

Tim Ferriss: All right. We can chalk that up to emo. Emo, period, check, explained. I’m going to get to the technical question. Before I get to that though, you did personal challenges annually for about 10 years. Which challenge ended up being much easier than expected, and which one ended up being much harder than expected. Either, or. Just be curious to know.

Mark Zuckerberg: I still do stuff like this. I don’t make as big of a deal of it anymore, but I think just kind of throwing yourself into different situations to learn new things. I think that’s just a big part of life. But which ones were hard? One, I tried to meet a new person every day for the year. That was hard for me. I’m pretty introverted. I built some amazing relationships out of it. I started teaching this class at the local boys and girls club with a friend and mentored the kids. I just talked to them a couple weeks ago, they were all, none of their families had gone to college before, and now they’re all graduating college. It’s pretty cool.

Tim Ferriss: That’s amazing.

Mark Zuckerberg: But I’m super introverted. I think that’s probably been another silver lining of the whole distributed work thing for me, is having space to kind of think and kind of control my time and like not get interrupted by other people so much. But it was an interesting balance being introverted but also being pretty sensitive and caring a lot about other people. I think that people kind of think that introverts don’t like other people or something. That’s not true. I just, just get overwhelmed easily.

The interesting thing is they all went in weird directions. One year I did this year of running. I did all kinds of different running. I did sprints, I did long distance running, and then my knees started hurting. Then, I broadened out and did triathlons, and we were training for this Iron Man, but then I broke my arm biking, so that ended up not quite happening. So they all kind of go in different directions. I learned Mandarin one year. Learned Mandarin, you can’t learn Mandarin in a year. I ended up studying it for—

Tim Ferriss: A challenging one.

Mark Zuckerberg: I mean, maybe someone can, I cannot. We talked about my language deficiency earlier on. That was partially, I like kind of throwing myself into things that are hard. Like I said before, I mean, I’ve studied a lot of languages in my life. A little Spanish, a little French, a little Hebrew, a lot of Latin, a bunch of Greek, but it’s actually hard for me. So I kind of like doing things that are hard for me. Obviously, Mandarin is important because Priscilla’s family is Chinese. Priscilla and I, after dating for almost 10 years, we decided we didn’t want to have like a big wedding that a lot of people, we didn’t want a lot of people asking us about it for a while, so we did it as a surprise wedding. Basically didn’t tell anyone, and in the morning of the wedding, we’re kind of telling everyone. I told Priscilla’s mother in Mandarin and I never knew before that, if she understood anything I was saying. And I just told her, and a single tear went down her face, and I was like, “Okay, my Mandarin is at least good enough for that.”

Tim Ferriss: Wow.

Mark Zuckerberg: A lot of them have a physical element just because I tend to think people focus so much on thought process, decision making, like, how can I be as smart as possible? I just think like energy level and— There hasn’t been that much that’s been written about historical figures and energy level as opposed to how they thought. But I actually would be very fascinated about, to kind of understand that. But I think just, I mean learning how to foil surf and things like that. It’s super humbling. I mean, these are like really hard skills. It takes like, before you can even get going—

Tim Ferriss: Foiling’s really hard— 

Mark Zuckerberg: I’m such a beginner. It’s just wild and it’s so much fun. You start off doing this like down-winding thing. I mean, the awesome thing about the foil is there’s almost no friction, compared to a surfboard. A surfboard, you need to be in a big wave or you just stop. But a foil, you’re kind of standing on the board, and you’re actually riding this little wing, and it has no friction or very little friction. You can basically just ride it on open ocean swells. It’s this great workout you can pump in between swells, and your heart rate gets up to like 160. But you can go for like a mile or more, and it’s just, it’s wild, and it’s a great workout. You can’t think about anything else while you are doing it because you will fall immediately. Learning new things is a big part of what brings meaning and joy to life.

Tim Ferriss: We’ll link to some of your annual challenges in the show notes, because you’ve tackled some very hard things, including Mandarin, which is certainly not one of the easier options out there, having been an East Asian studies major back in the day. All right. So I’ll ask the technical question, and it may be boring, but then, we’ll start to wrap up right after that. This is a question from a friend who’s a technologist, and he’s very curious how you’re thinking about computing for smart glasses. His question was, and this is a bit of a left turn yet again, but with respect to the metaverse, if the phone is one of the best places to do the computing, how do you think about navigating, say, phones that operate on OSs that you don’t control? How are you foreseeing the future of that unfolding?

Mark Zuckerberg: One of the wildest technical challenges for augmented reality, is that basically, you need to fit all this stuff into essentially a normal pair of glasses. VR will always— It’s supposed to be immersive. I mean, maybe it’ll eventually be more like ski goggles, it’ll be kind of thinner, but it’s not meant to just look like normal glasses. Whereas, augmented reality, if you’re going to wear that throughout the day, it really, it needs to be socially acceptable. You’re basically talking about the normal frames of glasses, maybe called thick rim frames, maybe five millimeters thick. Within that, you’re talking about fitting, what would’ve been called a super computer five or 10 years ago, basically like a laser projector, then, the tools to basically have that display, kind of, holograms with wave guides.

Because in order to make sure that the image in the holograms stays synced in the right place, it needs to know where your eye position is. You need, like, lasers that understand where your eyes are, and then it needs to have speakers because of course you’re going to want sound. It probably needs microphones because you’re going to want to have an assistant and talk to it, has sort of positional tracking so that way, if I’m sitting on your couch as a hologram and you move your head, I’m not moving off the couch. It needs to know exactly where you’re looking at. Okay. All that stuff to do all that computation instantly in glasses that are five millimeters thick. So I think this is one of the wildest technical challenges of the next 10 or 15 years, which is why I’m so excited about it. There’s this odd thing, where I think sometimes people get really inspired by physically big things. I actually think miniaturizing things to be tiny, is in a lot of ways, even a harder challenge. This is a lot of the work that’s going to happen.

Will it be valuable to have another phone or something like that? I don’t know, maybe. On the one hand, you can offload computing so that’s good. One of the biggest things that basically is a limiting factor is actually heat dissipation. If you have a processor that’s running on your glasses and it’s getting hot, you are making your face kind of warm and that’s uncomfortable. So if you can have that in your pocket, that’s better. On the flip side, you need to find a way to get all that stuff to the glasses and back and wireless chips are actually pretty energy intensive too. At some point, you’re going to always have some computation on the glasses. The kind of equilibrium I don’t think is to have all of the computation somewhere else. Then, you start getting into this interesting trade off, which is okay, well, if you’re Apple and you have the iPhone, is that an advantage? I think that there are a bunch of different questions in that. One is to what extent are they just going to advantage their own devices or they’re going to make it so that some of the APIs are open? And I think that this is somewhat of a regulatory question, right?

Mark Zuckerberg: It’s like, are they going to be allowed to just make something that has— They have a billion iPhones out there. Are the regulatory agencies around the world going to allow them to just only make it so that their glasses work with their thing? It seems to me like that there would be an issue with that. Then, there’s this other issue, which is if you were designing a secondary device for, say, input or something like that, it probably wouldn’t look like a phone exactly. There’s also some ways in which, I think when new computing platforms come around, people tend to assume that that model is sort of going to work, and that whatever the new thing is just sort of a peripheral to that existing platform. I think it kind of depends. It’s like maybe the watch is more of a peripheral to your phone, but I would guess that augmented and virtual reality are so fundamentally different, that whatever you want in your constellation of devices, you probably want it to be designed specifically for that and not just, okay, you happen to have a phone, now let’s shoehorn it into doing augmented reality too. I think there’s a lot of interesting questions in this, but I don’t know, at the end of the day, I think that there’s just a ton to be invented, and there are a lot of different ways that this could go.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Thank you, Mark. I appreciate you taking so much time in what is an incredibly busy week. I can only imagine. Is there anything else that you would like to touch on, any requests of the audience, anything at all that you’d like to chat about or mention before we bring this to a close?

Mark Zuckerberg: I mean, this was a pretty wide ranging conversation. It’s fun. I mean, I’ve never had someone start by asking me about fencing, and I don’t think I’ve ever done an interview or a podcast where we’ve talked so much about sports. I don’t know. I feel like we could do a whole ’nother one of these. I mean, we didn’t go into— 

Tim Ferriss: I feel like we could.

Mark Zuckerberg: —into science at all or curing diseases.

Tim Ferriss: I know, I know. A lot of notes left.

Mark Zuckerberg: Maybe there’s a whole ’nother session on that. Maybe like another couple of hours at some point.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, for sure.

Mark Zuckerberg: But this has been a lot of fun, so thank you for having me on.

Tim Ferriss: Of course, I really appreciate you being on and making the time for it. To everybody listening, we’ll also link to everything in the show notes, certainly. If there are any additional resources, Mark, that you or your team would like to put in the show notes, we can add those in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast. Certainly, people can find you online rather easily, I would say—Facebook, Zuck; Instagram, slash-Zuck; and of course, people can find Meta at meta.com. It’s been fun to have a wide-ranging conversation and as expected, I have many, many pages of topics left that we could cover. Certainly the science and research side is something that, if the opportunity presents itself, I’d love to get into at some point. But I really appreciate you taking time to have this conversation, Mark.

Mark Zuckerberg: This has been fun. Thanks for having me.

Related and Recommended

The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than one billion downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page .

Comment Rules: Remember what Fonzie was like? Cool. That’s how we’re gonna be — cool. Critical is fine, but if you’re rude, we’ll delete your stuff. Please do not put your URL in the comment text and please use your PERSONAL name or initials and not your business name , as the latter comes off like spam. Have fun and thanks for adding to the conversation! (Thanks to Brian Oberkirch for the inspiration.)

Great interview! Thanks for bring us such a great and inspiring content!

PSYCH 485 blog

Mark Zuckerberg and Skills Approach Leadership Theory

May 26, 2013 by mns5045

In this week’s assignment, one of the things my team needed to do was research leaders and select one in which to use as a subject for our studies on content learned thus far.  We decided on Mark Zuckerberg, the Creator and CEO of FaceBook.  We were required to select a theory or leadership approach to apply to the selected leader.  We chose the skills approach developed by M.D. Mumford and colleagues, which focuses on the “Three Components of the Skills Model” (Northouse, 2013, p.48).

The three components are as follows: (Northouse, 2013, p. 48)

Individual Attributes

• General Cognitive Ability
• Crystalized Cognitive Ability
• Personality

Competencies

• Problem-Solving
• Social Judgment Skills

Leadership Outcomes

• Effective Problem-Solving
• Performance

Because each one of our team members was to focus on different aspects of this leadership approach, I decided to focus on competencies of problem-solving and social judgment skills. Problem-solving almost seems to be a given for any study on leadership.  Any good leader must have problem-solving skills and know how to use them effectively.  But according to leadership scholars, “effective leadership performance also requires social judgement skills” (Northouse, 2013, p. 49).  Specifically, some say: “In essence, leaders are able to ascertain the demands, requirements, and affordances in organizational problem scenarios and tailor their responses accordingly” (Zaccaro, Mumford, Connelly, Marks & Gilbert, 2000, p. 170). 

S ocial perceptiveness and behavioral flexibility are two aspects of social judgment skills that I found to be interesting and quite fitting for this particular project on Mark Zuckerberg because his problem-solving requires social perceptiveness and behavioral flexibility in order to respond to and keep in his good graces, the general public.

A leader who exhibits social perceptiveness gives thought to what is important to others and how they react to change (Northouse, 2013).  Most times Zuckerberg envisioned and implemented a new user application for FaceBook, it was met with some disapproval by FaceBook members.  Newsfeeds in particular were a hot topic when they were added to FaceBook.  Many people felt their privacy was being invaded and started a FaceBook rally to have Zuckerberg remedy the issue.  Zuckerberg responded by creating a way for FaceBook users to select levels of privacy for their accounts so that only certain people could see their news feeds.  He responded.  And, so did the users.  Ultimately, they were appreciative of his immediate attention to their concerns and the issue was resolved quickly and adequately.  This is a great example of social perceptiveness . 

Behavioral flexibility is closely related to social perceptiveness .  It “is the capacity to change and adapt one’s behavior in light of an understanding of others’ perspectives in the organization” (Northouse, 2013, p. 50).  In this case, “the organization” is much the same as FaceBook users, for they are the people he must keep happy and adapt his behaviors for.

Lest we think high profile leaders are the only ones whose skills are applicable and worthy of study, I can offer one good example of a leader I once worked with during my employment as a college admissions representative.  The Director of Admissions worked directly with a team of diverse individuals for the purpose of fulfilling the college’s admissions quotas.  Her job was to keep the admissions team motivated and on task to meet monthly goals for phone calls, interviews, applications, enrollments, starts and graduations.  The team consisted of a newly retired U.S. Marine, two single mothers, and a recent college graduate with a major in business.  At times the Director of Admissions needed to meet with us as a team and other times, as individuals.  How she conducted team meetings was very different than how she conducted her individual meetings with each of us.  As a team she lead us with a very motivational, “there’s no I in team” approach, getting us excited about making our goals as a team for the college.  As individuals she needed to speak with us each on a more personal level and adapt and adjust her mannerisms to be effective with us on individual levels.  With the U.S. Marine admissions rep, she a used direct and goal-oriented approach.  With the two single mothers, she related to their more personal needs, and targeted their desire to earn incomes and keep their jobs for the well-being of their single-income households.  I personally always left her office feeling motivated and empowered.  For the recent college graduate, she used futuristic language, exciting the new grad about future prospects with the company, provided he performed and continued to impress the “higher ups”. 

This Director of Admissions understood her own leadership capacities and executed them effectively, so as to develop and maintain a high-performing admissions team.  Not only was she a pleasure to work for, she was a great example for those seeking to fill her shoes down the road!

Northouse, P.G. (2013).  Leadership Theory and Practice (Sixth Edition).  Thousand Oaks, CA:  SAGE Publications, Inc.

Zaccaro, S.J., Gilbert, J., Thor, K.K., & Mumford, M.D. (1991).  Leadership and social intelligence:  Linking social perceptiveness and behavioral flexibility to leader effectiveness.  Leadership Quarterly , 2, 317-331).

July 6, 2013 at 8:56 am

In discussion of the skills approach, Northouse (2013) suggests that knowledge and abilities are needed for effective leadership. I can agree that it takes a great amount of knowledge and extensive ability to be the mastermind behind facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. Furthermore, these leadership skills can be acquired and developed, and skills are what leaders can accomplish where as traits are who leaders are. It is amazing to point out the success of Mark Zuckerberg at such a young age, I find this to be comparable to a young Bill Gates. With the concept of the skills theory that leaders have the ability to develop skills, it is very possible to see Mark Zuckerberg develop bigger and better things in the future, adding to his legacy of Facebook. If he really is in terms an early stage Bill Gates comparison, he will sure do the impossible a few more times in his lifetime.

Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice. (6 ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publishing.

Zuckerberg and Hennessy discuss how social media can solve global challenges

Shortly after launching Facebook as a student at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg and his partners would wrap up their late night programming sessions by eating pizza and talking about the future of their social media network.

Wouldn't it be fantastic, they thought, if their network could one day connect everyone in the world, providing a safe and inviting forum to share ideas in meaningful ways that could help solve some of the biggest challenges facing the world?

Surely a big tech company would see what they were doing in their dorm room and build its own global social network.

“I kind of just assumed that one of [the big companies] would build this, and one of the surprises 10 years later is that it actually was us,” Zuckerberg said. “There’s no real reason why that should have been able to happen. I think we just cared more about seeing it happen.”

Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, shared this experience, a few career pointers and his philanthropic aspirations during a conversation with Stanford President John L. Hennessy in a packed Memorial Auditorium on Tuesday afternoon.

Before Facebook, Zuckerberg said, if people wanted to communicate ideas or messages over the Internet, they could do so only in very small private groups, such as by email, or in a very public forum, such as a message board or blog. Ideas and innovations weren't reaching their potential in these forums, he said, because not enough people were seeing the concepts, or the originator wasn't comfortable sharing more broadly.

“I think the fundamental idea that Facebook brought was creating this private space that didn't exist before, and by unlocking and opening that space, there’s a huge potential to allow people to communicate their ideas,” Zuckerberg said.

One thing that often gets lost in Silicon Valley, though, is that not everyone in the world has the opportunity to communicate such ideas: Only one third of the global population has access to the Internet, Zuckerberg said, and in many cases it's only through a spotty connection.

“We are robbed of an opportunity to benefit from the innovation that all those folks who are not connected can bring,” Zuckerberg said. “I want Facebook, and other social apps, to do more than share the moments of day-to-day, but to really have utility and solve big challenges.’

Stanford President John Hennessy speaking with Mark Zuckerberg.

One of Zuckerberg’s major ambitions, therefore, is to find ways to provide everyone in the world access to the Internet. As the global economy shifts from one focused on industry to a knowledge-based system, it’s imperative that everyone has equal access to financial and health-care tools, and other Web-based services that will help the next generation. He hopes to accomplish this through Facebook’s internet.org initiative.

Through his philanthropic work, he also hopes to foster a better appreciation for fundamental work in the life sciences through his funding commitment for the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. The money award recognizes scientists who have made significant, fundamental and transformative contributions to their field. With the prize, Zuckerberg and others seek to restore the “rock star” status that scientists such as Albert Einstein enjoyed earlier in the 20th century.

“Science is a market failure in that way,” he said. “The people making fundamental things in science often won’t make enough money with the things that they do, and in many cases won’t be able to support the work that they do.”

Supporting the life sciences and math and encouraging interdisciplinary collaborations, he said, plays a key role in identifying areas where the next big breakthrough will occur.

“One thing you learn in college is that picking the problem to go solve is sometimes more of a challenge than solving the problem,” he said. “A lot of time itx0146s knowing where the interesting intersections are.”

Of course, Zuckerberg is able to make these contributions largely because of Facebook’s incredible success. Speaking in front of an audience teeming with future scientists and engineers, he offered a few bits of career advice.

If you want to start a company, he said, make sure you know what you want to do. Focus on something that you care about personally, and you’ll have a better sense of the steps necessary to make it successful and a better chance of seeing it through.

“You want to look at real problems that people have, and those are often the ones that you have yourself, which you have the most real empathy for,” he said. “Pick problems that are real, and apply technology to that.”

He encouraged students to be unflappable in the face of adversity and doubters. The people who achieve great success are often the ones who care about something irrationally, before the world recognizes it.

Develop a thick skin and prepare for failures, he said. There’s no such thing as solving a hard problem without making some mistakes, but those mistakes are how you learn and get better.

”Entrepreneurs see the value in things that other people don’t see. The people who create it believe it, while others might not see the opportunity,” Hennessy said. “Great entrepreneurs see the glass half full as opposed to half empty, and they set their minds to figuring out how to fix that.”

During a Q&A session, one student asked Zuckerberg whether he regretted leaving college to start a company.

Zuckerberg didn’t hesitate long before saying “nope,” at which point Hennessy informed the CEO that Stanford allows Harvard students to transfer their credits, should he wish to enroll. He later gave Zuckerberg a gray Stanford hoodie and an official Nerd Nation T-shirt.

The future of brain science

AI and holography bring 3D augmented reality to regular glasses

The future of cybersecurity

• Work & Careers
• Life & Arts

Become an FT subscriber

Try unlimited access Only $1 for 4 weeks

Then $75 per month. Complete digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Cancel anytime during your trial.

• Global news & analysis
• Expert opinion
• Special features
• FirstFT newsletter
• Videos & Podcasts
• Android & iOS app
• FT Edit app
• 10 gift articles per month

Explore more offers.

Standard digital.

• FT Digital Edition

Premium Digital

Print + premium digital, weekend print + standard digital, weekend print + premium digital.

Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Pay a year upfront and save 20%.

• Global news & analysis
• Exclusive FT analysis
• FT App on Android & iOS
• FirstFT: the day's biggest stories
• 20+ curated newsletters
• Follow topics & set alerts with myFT
• FT Videos & Podcasts
• 20 monthly gift articles to share
• Lex: FT's flagship investment column
• 15+ Premium newsletters by leading experts
• FT Digital Edition: our digitised print edition
• Weekday Print Edition
• Videos & Podcasts
• Premium newsletters
• 10 additional gift articles per month
• FT Weekend Print delivery
• Everything in Standard Digital
• Everything in Premium Digital

Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders. Pay a year upfront and save 20%.

• 10 monthly gift articles to share
• Everything in Print

Terms & Conditions apply

Explore our full range of subscriptions.

Why the ft.

See why over a million readers pay to read the Financial Times.

International Edition

The trouble with charitable billionaires

More and more wealthy CEOs are pledging to give away parts of their fortunes – often to help fix problems their companies caused. Some call this ‘philanthrocapitalism’, but is it just corporate hypocrisy? By Carl Rhodes and Peter Bloom

I n February 2017, Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in the headlines for his charitable activities. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, founded by the tech billionaire and his wife, Priscilla Chan, handed out over $3m in grants to aid the housing crisis in the Silicon Valley area. David Plouffe, the Initiative’s president of policy and advocacy, stated that the grants were intended to “support those working to help families in immediate crisis while supporting research into new ideas to find a long-term solution – a two-step strategy that will guide much of our policy and advocacy work moving forward”.

This is but one small part of Zuckerberg’s charity empire. The Initiative has committed billions of dollars to philanthropic projects designed to address social problems, with a special focus on solutions driven by science, medical research and education. This all took off in December 2015, when Zuckerberg and Chan wrote and published a letter to their new baby Max . The letter made a commitment that over the course of their lives they would donate 99% of their shares in Facebook (at the time valued at $45bn) to the “mission” of “advancing human potential and promoting equality”.

The housing intervention is of course much closer to home, dealing with issues literally at the door of Facebook’s Menlo Park head office. This is an area where median house prices almost doubled to around $2m in the five years between 2012 and 2017.

More generally, San Francisco is a city with massive income inequality, and the reputation of having the most expensive housing in the US. Chan Zuckerberg’s intervention was clearly designed to offset social and economic problems caused by rents and house prices having skyrocketed to such a level that even tech workers on six-figure salaries find it hard to get by. For those on more modest incomes, supporting themselves, let alone a family, is nigh-on impossible.

Ironically, the boom in the tech industry in this region – a boom Facebook has been at the forefront of – has been a major contributor to the crisis. As Peter Cohen from the Council of Community Housing Organizations explained it: “When you’re dealing with this total concentration of wealth and this absurd slosh of real-estate money, you’re not dealing with housing that’s serving a growing population. You’re dealing with housing as a real-estate commodity for speculation.”

Zuckerberg’s apparent generosity, it would seem, is a small contribution to a large problem that was created by the success of the industry he is involved in. In one sense, the housing grants (equivalent to the price of just one-and-a-half average Menlo Park homes) are trying to put a sticking plaster on a problem that Facebook and other Bay Area corporations aided and abetted. It would appear that Zuckerberg was redirecting a fraction of the spoils of neoliberal tech capitalism, in the name of generosity, to try to address the problems of wealth inequality created by a social and economic system that allowed those spoils to accrue in the first place.

It is easy to think of Zuckerberg as some kind of CEO hero – a once regular kid whose genius made him one of the richest men in the world, and who decided to use that wealth for the benefit of others. The image he projects is of altruism untainted by self-interest. A quick scratch of the surface reveals that the structure of Zuckerberg’s charity enterprise is informed by much more than good-hearted altruism. Even while many have applauded Zuckerberg for his generosity, the nature of this apparent charity was openly questioned from the outset.

The wording of Zuckerberg’s 2015 letter could easily have been interpreted as meaning that he was intending to donate $45bn to charity. As investigative reporter Jesse Eisinger reported at the time, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative through which this giving was to be funnelled is not a not-for-profit charitable foundation, but a limited liability company. This legal status has significant practical implications, especially when it comes to tax. As a company, the Initiative can do much more than charitable activity: its legal status gives it rights to invest in other companies, and to make political donations. Effectively the company does not restrict Zuckerberg’s decision-making as to what he wants to do with his money; he is very much the boss. Moreover, as Eisinger described it, Zuckerberg’s bold move yielded a huge return on investment in terms of public relations for Facebook, even though it appeared that he simply “moved money from one pocket to the other” while being “likely never to pay any taxes on it”.

The creation of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative – decidedly not a charity organisation – means that Zuckerberg can control the company’s investments as he sees fit, while accruing significant commercial, tax and political benefits. All of this is not to say that Zuckerberg’s motives do not include some expression of his own generosity or some genuine desire for humanity’s wellbeing and equality.

What it does suggest, however, is that when it comes to giving, the CEO approach is one in which there is no apparent incompatibility between being generous, seeking to retain control over what is given, and the expectation of reaping benefits in return. This reformulation of generosity – in which it is no longer considered incompatible with control and self-interest – is a hallmark of the “CEO society”: a society where the values associated with corporate leadership are applied to all dimensions of human endeavour.

M ark Zuckerberg was by no means the first contemporary CEO to promise and initiate large-scale donations of wealth to self-nominated good causes. In the CEO society it is positively a badge of honour for the world’s most wealthy businesspeople to create vehicles to give away their wealth. This has been institutionalised in what is known as The Giving Pledge , a philanthropy campaign initiated by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in 2010. The campaign targets billionaires around the world, encouraging them to give away the majority of their wealth. There is nothing in the pledge that specifies what exactly the donations will be used for, or even whether they are to be made now or willed after death; it is just a general commitment to using private wealth for ostensibly public good. It is not legally binding either, but a moral commitment.

There is a long list of people and families who have made the pledge. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are there, and so are some 174 others, including household names such as Richard and Joan Branson, Michael Bloomberg, Barron Hilton and David Rockefeller. It would seem that many of the world’s richest people simply want to give their money away to good causes. This all amounts to what human geographers Iain Hay and Samantha Muller sceptically refer to as a “golden age of philanthropy”, in which, since the late 1990s, bequests to charity from the super-rich have escalated to the hundreds of billions of dollars. These new philanthropists bring to charity an “entrepreneurial disposition”, Hay and Muller wrote in a 2014 paper , yet one that they suggest has been “diverting attention and resources away from the failings of contemporary manifestations of capitalism”, and may also be serving as a substitute for public spending withdrawn by the state.

Essentially, what we are witnessing is the transfer of responsibility for public goods and services from democratic institutions to the wealthy, to be administered by an executive class. In the CEO society, the exercise of social responsibilities is no longer debated in terms of whether corporations should or shouldn’t be responsible for more than their own business interests. Instead, it is about how philanthropy can be used to reinforce a politico-economic system that enables such a small number of people to accumulate obscene amounts of wealth. Zuckerberg’s investment in solutions to the Bay Area housing crisis is an example of this broader trend.

The reliance on billionaire businesspeople’s charity to support public projects is a part of what has been called “philanthrocapitalism”. This resolves the apparent antinomy between charity (traditionally focused on giving) and capitalism (based on the pursuit of economic self-interest). As historian Mikkel Thorup explains, philanthrocapitalism rests on the claim that “capitalist mechanisms are superior to all others (especially the state) when it comes to not only creating economic but also human progress, and that the market and market actors are or should be made the prime creators of the good society”.

The golden age of philanthropy is not just about benefits that accrue to individual givers. More broadly, philanthropy serves to legitimise capitalism, as well as to extend it further and further into all domains of social, cultural and political activity.

Philanthrocapitalism is about much more than the simple act of generosity it pretends to be, instead involving the inculcation of neoliberal values personified by the billionaire CEOs who have led its charge. Philanthropy is recast in the same terms in which a CEO would consider a business venture. Charitable giving is translated into a business model that employs market-based solutions characterised by efficiency and quantified costs and benefits.

Philanthrocapitalism takes the application of management discourses and practices from business corporations and adapts them to charitable work. The focus is on entrepreneurship, market-based approaches and performance metrics. The process is funded by super-rich businesspeople and managed by those experienced in business. The result, at a practical level, is that philanthropy is undertaken by CEOs in a manner similar to how they would run businesses.

As part of this, charitable foundations have changed in recent years. As explained in a paper by Garry Jenkins, a professor of law at the University of Minnesota, this involves becoming “increasingly directive, controlling, metric-focused and business-oriented with respect to their interactions with grantee public charities, in an attempt to demonstrate that the work of the foundation is ‘strategic’ and ‘accountable’”.

This is far from the benign shift to a different and better way of doing things that it claims to be – a CEO style to “save the world through business thinking and market methods”, as Jenkins puts it. Instead, the risk of philanthrocapitalism is a takeover of charity by business interests, such that generosity to others is appropriated into the overarching dominance of the CEO model of society and its corporate institutions.

T he modern CEO is very much at the forefront of the political and media stage. While this often leads to CEOs becoming vaunted celebrities, it also leaves them open to being identified as scapegoats for economic injustice. The increasingly public role taken by CEOs is related to a renewed corporate focus on their wider social responsibility. Firms must now balance, at least rhetorically, a dual commitment to profit and social outcomes. This has been reflected in the promotion of the “triple bottom line”, which combines social, financial and environmental priorities in corporate reporting.

This turn toward social responsibility represents a distinct problem for CEOs. While firms may be willing to sacrifice some short-term profit for the sake of preserving their public reputation, this same bargain is rarely on offer to CEOs themselves, who are judged on their quarterly reports and how well they are serving the fiscal interests of their shareholders. Thus, whereas social responsibility strategies may win public kudos, in the confines of the boardroom it is often a different story, especially when the budget is being scrutinised.

There is a further economic incentive for CEOs to avoid making fundamental changes to their operations in the name of social justice, in that a large portion of CEO remuneration often consists of company stock and options. Accepting fair trade policies and closing sweatshops may be good for the world, but is potentially disastrous for a firm’s immediate financial success. What is ethically valuable to the voting and buying public is not necessarily of concrete value to corporations, nor personally beneficial to their top executives.

Many firms have sought to resolve this contradiction through high-profile philanthropy. Exploitative labour practices or corporate malpractice are swept under the carpet as companies publicise tax-efficient contributions to good causes. Such contributions may be a relatively small price to pay compared with changing fundamental operational practices. Likewise, giving to charity is a prime opportunity for CEOs to be seen to be doing good without having to sacrifice their commitment to making profit at any social cost. Charitable activity permits CEOs to be philanthropic rather than economically progressive or politically democratic.

There is an even more straightforward financial consideration at play in some cases. Charity can be an absolute boon to capital accumulation: corporate philanthropy has been shown to have a positive effect on perceptions by stock market analysts. At the personal level, CEOs can take advantage of promoting their individual charity to distract from other, less savoury activities; as an executive, they can cash in on the capital gains that can be made from introducing high-profile charity strategies.

T he very notion of corporate social responsibility, or CSR, has been criticised for providing companies with a moral cover to act in quite exploitative and socially damaging ways. But in the current era, social responsibility, when portrayed as an individual character trait of chief executives, has allowed corporations to be run as irresponsibly as ever. CEOs’ very public engagement in philanthrocapitalism can be understood as a key component of this reputation management. It is part of the marketing of the firm itself, as the good deeds of its leaders come to signify the overall goodness of the corporation.

Ironically, philanthrocapitalism also grants corporations the moral right, at least within the public consciousness, to be socially irresponsible. The trumpeting of the CEOs’ personal generosity can grant an implicit right for their corporations to act ruthlessly and with little consideration for the broader social effects of their activities. This reflects a productive tension at the heart of modern CSR: the more moral a CEO, the more immoral their company can in theory seek to be.

The hypocrisy revealed by CEOs claiming to be dedicated to social responsibility and charity also exposes a deeper authoritarian morality that prevails in the CEO society. Philanthrocapitalism is commonly presented as the social justice component of an otherwise amoral global free market. At best, corporate charity is a type of voluntary tax paid by the 1% for their role in creating such an economically deprived and unequal world. Yet this “giving” culture also helps support and spread a distinctly authoritarian form of economic development that mirrors the autocratic leadership style of the executives who predominantly fund it.

The marketisation of global charity and empowerment has dangerous implications that transcend economics. It also has a troubling emerging political legacy, one in which democracy is sacrificed on that altar of executive-style empowerment. Politically, the free market is posited as a fundamental requirement for liberal democracy. However, recent analysis reveals the deeper connection between processes of marketisation and authoritarianism. In particular, a strong government is required to implement these often unpopular market changes. The image of the powerful autocrat is, to this effect, transformed into a potentially positive figure, a forward-thinking political leader who can guide their country on the correct market path in the face of “irrational” opposition. Charity becomes a conduit for CEOs to fund these “good” authoritarians.

The recent development of philanthrocapitalism also marks the increasing encroachment of business into the provision of public goods and services. This encroachment is not limited to the activities of individual billionaires; it is also becoming a part of the activities of large corporations under the rubric of CSR. This is especially the case for large multinational corporations whose global reach, wealth and power give them significant political clout. This relationship has been referred to as “political CSR”. Business ethics professors Andreas Scherer and Guido Palazzo note that, for large corporations, “CSR is increasingly displayed in corporate involvement in the political process of solving societal problems, often on a global scale”. Such political CSR initiatives see organisations cooperating and collaborating with governments, civic bodies and international institutions, so that historical separations between the purposes of the state and the corporations are increasingly eroded.

Global corporations have long been involved in quasi-governmental activities such as the setting of standards and codes, and today are increasingly engaging in other activities that have traditionally been the domain of government, such as public health provision, education, the protection of human rights, addressing social problems such as Aids and malnutrition, protection of the natural environment and the promotion of peace and social stability.

Today, large organisations can amass significant economic and political power, on a global scale. This means that their actions – and the way those actions are regulated – have far-reaching social consequences. The balanced tipped in 2000, when the Institute for Policy Studies in the US reported , after comparing corporate revenues with gross domestic product (GDP), that 51 of the largest economies in the world were corporations, and 49 were national economies. The biggest corporations were General Motors, Walmart and Ford, each of which was larger economically than Poland, Norway and South Africa. As the heads of these corporations, CEOs are now quasi-politicians. One only has to think of the increasing power of the World Economic Forum, whose annual meeting in Davos in Switzerland sees corporate CEOs and senior politicians getting together with the ostensible goal of “improving the world”, a now time-honoured ritual that symbolises the global power and agency of CEOs.

T he development of CSR is not the result of self-directed corporate initiatives for doing good deeds, but a response to widespread CSR activism from NGOs, pressure groups and trade unions. Often this has been in response to the failure of governments to regulate large corporations. High-profile industrial accidents and scandals have also put pressure on organisations for heightened self-regulation.

An explosion at a Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India in 1984 led to the deaths of an estimated 25,000 people. James Post, a professor of management at Boston University, explains that, after the disaster, “the global chemical industry recognised that it was nearly impossible to secure a licence to operate without public confidence in industry safety standards. The Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) adopted a code of conduct, including new standards of product stewardship, disclosure and community engagement.”

The impetus for this was corporate self-interest, rather than generosity, as industries and corporations globally “began to recognise the increasing importance of reputation and image”. Similar moves were enacted after other major industrial accidents, such as the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spilling hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil in Alaska in 1989, and BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploding in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Another important case was the involvement of the clothing companies Gap and Nike in a child labour scandal after the broadcast of a BBC Panorama documentary in October 2000. Factories in Cambodia making Gap and Nike clothing were shown to operate with terrible working conditions, involving children as young as 12 working seven days a week, being forced to do overtime, and enduring physical and emotional abuse from management. The public outcry that ensued demanded that Gap and Nike, and other organisations like them, take more responsibility for the negative human social impacts of their business practices.

CSR was introduced in order to reduce the ill effects of corporate self-interest. But over time it has turned into a means for further enhancing that self-interest while ostensibly claiming to be addressing the interests of others. When facing the threat of corporate scandal, CSR is seen as the vehicle through which corporate reputation can be boosted, and the threat of government regulation can be mitigated. Again, here we see how corporations engage in seemingly responsible practices in order to increase their own political power, and to diminish the power of nation states over their own operations.

The idea that organisations adopt CSR for the purposes of developing or defending a corporate reputation has put the ethics of CSR under scrutiny. The contention has arisen that, rather than using CSR as a means of “being good”, corporations adopt it merely as a means of “looking good”, while not in any way questioning their basic ethical or political stance. Even Enron, before its legendary fraud scandal and eventual demise in 2001, was well known for its advocacy of social responsibility.

C EO generosity is epic in proportions – or at least that is how it is portrayed. Indeed, on an individual level it is hard to find fault with those rich people who have given away vast swaths of their wealth to charitable causes, or those corporations that champion socially responsible programmes. But what CSR and philanthrocapitalism achieve more broadly is the social justification of extreme wealth inequality, rather than any kind of antidote to it. We need to note here that, despite the apparent proliferation of giving promised by philanthrocapitalism, the so-called golden age of philanthropy is also an age of expanding inequality.

This is clearly spelled out a 2017 report by Oxfam called An Economy for the 99% . It highlights the injustice and unsustainability of a world suffering from widening levels of inequality: since the early 1990s, the top 1% of the world’s wealthy people have gained more income than the entire bottom 50%. Why so? Oxfam’s report places the blame firmly with corporations and the global market economies in which they operate. The statistics are alarming, with the world’s 10 biggest corporations having revenues that exceed the total combined revenues of the 180 least wealthy nations. Corporate social responsibility is not making any real difference. The report states: “When corporations increasingly work for the rich, the benefits of economic growth are denied to those who need them most. In pursuit of delivering high returns to those at the top, corporations are driven to squeeze their workers and producers ever harder – and to avoid paying taxes which would benefit everyone, and the poorest people in particular.”

Neither the philanthropy of the super-rich nor socially directed corporate programmes have any real effect on combating this trend, in the same way that Zuckerberg’s handout of $3m will have a negligible effect on the San Francisco housing crisis. Instead, vast fortunes in the hands of the few, whether earned through inheritance, commerce or crime, continue to grow at the expense of the poor.

In the end, it is capitalism that is at the heart of philanthrocapitalism, and the corporation that is at the heart of corporate social responsibility, with even well-meaning endeavours serving to justify a system that is rigged in favour of the rich.

What is particular about this new approach is not that rich people are supporting charitable endeavours, but that it involves, as sociologist Linsey McGoey explains, “an openness that deliberately collapses the distinction between public and private interests, in order to justify increasingly concentrated levels of private gain”.

In the CEO society, corporate logic such as this rules supreme, and ensures that any activities thought of as generous and socially responsible ultimately have a payoff in terms of self-interest. If there was ever a debate between the ethics of genuine hospitality, reciprocity and self-interest, it is not to be found here. It is in accordance with this CEO logic that the mechanisms for redressing the inequality created through wealth generation are placed in the hands of the wealthy, and in a way that ultimately benefits them. The worst excesses of neoliberal capitalism are morally justified by the actions of the very people who benefit from those excesses. Wealth redistribution is placed in the hands of the wealthy, and social responsibility in the hands of those who have exploited society for personal gain.

Meanwhile, inequality is growing, and both corporations and the wealthy find ways to avoid the taxes that the rest of us pay. In the name of generosity, we find a new form of corporate rule, refashioning another dimension of human endeavour in its own interests. Such is a society where CEOs are no longer content to do business; they must control public goods as well. In the end, while the Giving Pledge’s website may feature more and more smiling faces of smug-looking CEOs, the real story is of a world characterised by gross inequality that is getting worse year by year.

CEO Society: The Corporate Takeover of Everyday Life by Peter Bloom and Carl Rhodes is published by Zed Books. It is available to buy at guardianbookshop.com

Note added 29 May 2018: Foundations support some Guardian specialist journalism projects, which are editorially independent and required to adhere to these content funding guidelines .

• The long read
• Philanthropy
• Corporate social responsibility
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Voluntary sector

Most viewed

How Mark Zuckerberg turned against the news

Your browser does not support the video element.

• Mark Zuckerberg is over the news media.
• Meta insiders share what led the CEO to turn on the industry, one he once vowed to support.
• Unexpected billions in cost, personal animosities, and Rupert Murdoch all played a role.  

Mark Zuckerberg held regular discussions in 2017 and early 2018 about how to make news on Facebook more trustworthy and reliable. These talks started to coalesce around either buying a large, trusted news organization or Facebook starting its own.

At the time, Facebook, which had yet to rebrand as Meta , was still reeling from the politicization and related manipulation of the platform during the 2016 US presidential election, which contributed to Donald Trump becoming president. After initially dismissing Facebook's role in politics and its influence on voters, Zuckerberg shifted his tone.

In a 2017 memo , he laid out how Facebook was dedicated to improving as a platform with responsibility to its users and to the news industry. "Giving people a voice is not enough without having people dedicated to uncovering new information and analyzing it," Zuckerberg wrote. "There is more we must do to support the news industry to make sure this vital social function is sustainable."

The tone was sincere, according to several people familiar with the note and Zuckerberg's thinking at the time. He'd personally approved the Facebook Journalism Project, wherein a team at the company wrote checks to news organizations big and small.

But maybe there was a simpler way. "When it came to the fake news problem then, it was a question of, can we just do it ourselves?" a person with direct knowledge of the talks said.

Build it or buy it

Zuckerberg weighed his options: "Build it, or buy it?" another person familiar with the talks said. A top contender in the "buy it" category was the Associated Press, two people with knowledge of the process said. Zuckerberg was interested in Facebook effectively having its own wire service and AP fit the bill . Facebook's mergers and acquisitions team became directly involved, but the idea lost steam as it became clear an outright acquisition of a major news publisher would draw regulatory scrutiny, one of the people familiar said. Zuckerberg also considered a permanent subsidy through his philanthropy the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative . He ended up not liking that idea because using a charitable organization to "solve a Facebook problem" would probably look bad.

The "build it" talks revolved around Facebook creating its own news outlet, three people familiar with the talks said. That idea was also shelved, in part because there was concern about public blowback to such a launch.

Business Insider spoke to a dozen current and former Meta employees involved in high-level actions and decision-making around work with news and media publishers about the company's increasingly tenuous relationship with the media. They were granted anonymity to speak freely without fear of retribution.

A Meta spokesperson, Tracy Clayton, declined to comment, referring BI to a company blog post from February announcing it was removing the dedicated news tab on Facebook.

'Everything the news team built was killed'

Not long after these "build it or buy it" talks, Zuckerberg decided news media, on the whole, was much more trouble than it would ever be worth to him. In the past 18 months or so, Meta has moved away from any interest in the news industry or even tacit support of it. The company's news budget had grown to $2 billion, including negotiated direct payments to publishers, two people familiar with the budget said. Last year, amid Meta's "Year of Efficiency," that budget was cut down to about $100 million.

"However important journalism is, it's possibly the least interesting thing in the world to Mark now," a former high-level Meta employee said.

That's become clear. CrowdTangle, a tool that gave publishers performance insights, is shutting down in August. The Facebook Journalism Project is effectively dead. Nearly everyone on the news team within Meta was laid off or left between late 2022 and 2023. The Facebook platform started blocking news in Canada. Meta has entirely removed Facebook's dedicated News tab in several countries, including the US, UK, and Australia, meaning news content is no longer intentionally surfaced, even if a user is looking for it (the tab used to be on the Facebook homepage).

Executives like Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram and Threads, said explicitly such platforms are now decisively showing people less news and related political content . The entire algorithm of Facebook and Instagram, most notably, was also transitioned to one that recommends "unconnected content," or content based on what a user has engaged with. As no news content is made readily accessible on Meta's platforms, there is effectively no way a user can randomly interact with it and be shown more.

"Everything the news team built was killed. It was a full turnaround from massive budgets to fund news to everything being essentially turned off one day," the same former high-level employee said. "Internally, there was no drama about it, Mark is not emotional like that. It was, 'This is clearly not helping our business, and this is a business decision. We're done.'"

Related stories

An early sign that Meta wanted to distance itself from the news industry came in 2022 when the company changed the name of one of its first and most successful products , the News Feed (a separate product from the News tab), to just Feed .

Zuckerberg decided Facebook's relationship with the news industry had become untenable toward the end of 2019. That was when Australian government officials first informed Facebook and Google that the country was pursuing a new law, the News Media Bargaining Code. It would require both companies to negotiate payment deals with news publishers to continue hosting links to their content.

Within Facebook, dealing with the news media immediately went from a peripheral annoyance, an occasional frustration that had no real effect on Facebook's business, to a potentially massive cost.

"Australia alone was now going to cost us about $100 million a year," a person who worked for Meta at the time with knowledge of the situation said. "Assuming other countries would follow suit, which they did, the cost quickly went up to several billion a year. And it was then that the top executives were like 'Time out, what the fuck are you all doing in news that this is suddenly a multibillion-dollar risk?'"

The NMBC became law in 2021, and every Meta insider BI spoke to for this story argued it was orchestrated by political juggernaut Rupert Murdoch, the founder of the News Corp. empire. News Corp. was the first to strike a deal with Facebook on payment for news content in Australia after the law was passed. A representative of News Corp., James Kennedy, declined to comment but emailed BI copied sections from several news reports about the NMBC that mentioned News Corp. was not the sole beneficiary of the law. He also highlighted mentions of Rod Sims , the former chair of Australia's competition authority, and characterized him as the architect of the NMBC.

In mid-2017, Zuckerberg and a handful of other top Facebook executives did a management off-site with Murdoch and his top executives from News Corp. and Fox, including his son Lachlan, a person who attended said. The group spent a day together, dining and talking business tactics. Murdoch and Zuckerberg's yearslong relationship, while never outright friendly, turned "tense, very tense," when Australia passed the NMBC, a person who worked with Zuckerberg said. He was involved directly in negotiations with Australian officials like Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in the run-up to its passage.

During a 2 a.m. call with Joel Kaplan, Meta's vice president of policy, and Campbell Brown, who was vice president of news partnerships until leaving last year, and a small number of other Facebook executives, Zuckerberg decided that Facebook would simply turn off news in Australia for good. "We did all the calculations on what would happen if we removed and blocked all the news there, and it was a tiny, almost negligible impact on engagement," one of the people familiar with the situation said.

Two weeks later, Zuckerberg reversed course when his talks with Frydenberg resulted in some amendments to the law, effectively removing the threat of arbitration if publishers weren't satisfied with Facebook's deals.

Since the law passed, Meta has paid around $100 million a year for news content in the country, according to two people familiar with the deals that the company has entered into with Australian publishers. "It did nothing to decrease tensions with the media there or increase goodwill in any way," one of the people said.

No turning back

Meta's bill to Australian publishers is expected to be much lower this year, as the company said recently news consumption on Facebook in Australia is already down 80% compared to last year.

Meta removed the News tab in Australia and said in April that "we will not enter into new commercial deals for traditional news content in these countries and will not offer new Facebook products specifically for news publishers in the future." Any deals Meta has with publishers in the US and UK, including those with News Corp., have already expired. Remaining deals in Australia, France, and Germany are set to do so in the next few years.

When Canada passed a law similar to Australia's last year, Meta simply and decisively turned off news content on Facebook and Instagram. It was not a tortured decision. If news organizations attempt to squeeze money out of Meta in the future, the company's plan is to turn it off entirely .

"If the whole Australia thing had not happened, maybe Facebook would never have gotten out of news at all," a former Meta employee with knowledge of the situation at the time said. Now, "there is no going back."

By and large, media executives blame Meta and Google for gobbling up most of the available digital-advertising dollars, leaving news organizations to fight for scraps. The news industry has been in a 20-year struggle to figure out a modern business model and it continues to shrink significantly. Meta is more successful than ever. But its relationship with media remains fraught.

After Trump's election and the acknowledgment of misinformation on Facebook, which Zuckerberg said would be fixed, the next three years saw the Cambridge Analytica scandal, genocide in Myanmar, user-privacy issues, a whistleblower, and the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots. Those are just a few instances of Facebook being blamed directly or at least criticized for its role in political and public upheaval.

"You'd go into a meeting with a TV network or a news company and they would just tell us what assholes we are for an hour," a person who worked for years in such a role at Meta said. Even when Facebook started writing more checks to more news organizations as part of its News Accelerator Program — which started in 2018 with a budget of $300 million to hand out to publishers, and later with direct multimillion-dollar deals with publishers for their content — relations did not improve.

"People in news feel like Facebook owes them something," one of the former high-level employees said. "But eventually, if you push Mark to the brink, his response is 'Nope, I'm done.'"

There were mixed views among executives who worked closest with Zuckerberg on supporting news. Zuckerberg was initially fine directly engaging with the media on their terms, if only because "he found it an interesting problem to solve, like 'here's an important industry with no business model, maybe I can fix it,'" one of the high-level former employees said. When he switched sides, so did everyone else.

Are you a Meta employee or someone with a tip or insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at [email protected] or on secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267. Reach out using a non-work device.

Watch: The biggest controversies during Murdoch's reign at Fox

• Main content

Navigating Ethical AI: The New Frontier in Business Development

I n the fast-paced world of Silicon Valley, where the mantra "move fast and break things" once prevailed, a new wave is emerging-one that prioritizes integrity, ethical conduct, and sustainable business practices. As technology giants grapple with the repercussions of their rapid innovation, entrepreneurs are embracing a kinder, gentler, and integrity-driven approach to business development.

Reimagining the Modern Business Development Ethos

The tech industry, epitomized by Mark Zuckerberg's "move fast and break things" mantra, is witnessing a transformative shift. While giants like Meta, Google, Tesla, and Open AI continue to push boundaries with seemingly little care for the consequences, a realization has dawned that there might be a better way. Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, who once tweeted for tech to "move faster," is now juxtaposing this original position with his staunch calls for global regulation of artificial intelligence. 

"We think that regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models," Altman said in a 2023 Senate hearing . Altman's willingness to work with regulators, something other tech giants have refused again and again, shines a light on the fresh idea that thoughtful speed, coupled with integrity, can yield compounding benefits.

Seeing leaders like Altman behave this way begs the question: What if the key to success lies in moving fast with a commitment to responsibility?

The Power of Integrity in Business Development

Integrity is at the heart of this evolving business landscape. It involves honesty, strong moral principles, and a commitment to being whole and undivided in actions. The benefits of practicing integrity in business are multifaceted, ranging from a stronger reputation and employee satisfaction to clearer focus and stronger results. Upholding integrity is not merely a slogan but a continuous commitment backed by consistent action, explains Buddika Wickramasinghe, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Lead, on LinkedIn.

"To truly excel in today's competitive business environment, companies must prioritize ethical and transparent practices," writes Wickramasinghe. "This means delivering on promises, setting realistic expectations, and providing exceptional customer service. Transparent communication, proactive problem-solving, and continuous improvement are essential elements for cultivating trust and fostering long-term growth."

Leading by example is critical for integrity to be baked into any company. That means business leaders need to create a unique code of ethics based on company values, and industry norms, and receive employee input. Then, they must follow these rules , too. Open and regular communication, coupled with an easy and transparent process for reporting violations, ensures a culture of ethical awareness and unity. Demonstrating consequences for ethical violations, as well as consistently reinforcing integrity through creative methods are key practices in building a company with a strong ethical foundation.

In the pursuit of growth, businesses are recognizing that prioritizing ethical and transparent practices is paramount. The intersection of growth and integrity is explored through the lens of delivering on promises, setting realistic expectations, and providing exceptional customer service. Companies that prioritize ethical conduct, transparent communication, proactive problem-solving, and continuous improvement are poised not just for success but for immeasurable potential fueled by trust. As the business world evolves, the shift towards integrity-driven business development is a testament to the enduring power of responsible and sustainable practices.

Harvard Business Review

New York Times

Business Insider

CFO Selections

Dan Nicholson is the author of " Rigging the Game: How to Achieve Financial Certainty, Navigate Risk and Make Money on Your Own Terms," deemed a best-seller by USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. In addition to founding the award-winning accounting and financial consulting firm Nth Degree CPAs, Dan has created and run multiple small businesses, including Certainty U and the Certified Certainty Advisor program.

This article was originally published in Certainty News .

6 Biggest Problems Mark Zuckerberg faced in Early Days of Facebook

Written by BusinessAlligators Support

Business basics | entrepreneur, 10 comment(s), april 25, 2016.

While I was doing my research upon  problems Mark Zuckerberg faced during the early days, I came across a website commenting on him that ‘the guy’ doesn’t care much about making money. It is indeed a stunning remark for someone who made it to the Forbes list seven times since last year. The way in which Mark Zuckerberg operates has been totally different since he has started working. The co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg started it small in 2004 while he was a college student. Little did he know that his idea would reach this level and also he was unaware of the hardship and problems of Business life. He always was into an innovation but making money was never his forte. But as we all know, with great power come greater responsibilities. Mark Zuckerberg’s journey from ‘Facemash’ to ‘Facebook’ has not been entirely smooth. Mark Zuckerberg faced millions of problems during his early days.

Looking at the success of Mark Zuckerberg it is nearly impossible to imagine him having gone through any hardships during his beginning stage of Facebook. But for every entrepreneur facing multiple challenges is inevitable. This is what makes a strong player. The following lists the major problems faced by Mark Zuckerberg in the early days of the launch of Facebook.

1. Dealing with Criticism, Being called a “Toddler CEO”

• How to face media after the blame of idea theft.
• What to say about the hidden partners in public.

Talking about CEOs our minds jump to the names of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. They co-founded their companies at the age of 20. Both were unusual. It was until late that he got real respect and recognition from the world. Even in the beginning phase when Mark Zuckerberg was a college student, he faced a lot of criticism for getting the blame of having stolen the idea of Harvardconnectins.com and building a competing product. The Twins from Mark’s senior year claimed that Mark sabotaged their project and betrayed them. Mark Zuckerberg confronted yet another challenge when Ben Mezrich wrote his far-famed book, ‘The Accidental Billionaires’, was launched in 2009. Mezrich became intensely infamous for his book telling Zuckerberg’s story, obviously with some acumen and garnish on the true one. ‘A writer’s mind is pretty imaginative, you see.’

2. Funding and Investment

• How to transform Facebook into a Must-Own stock.
• Finding lead investors for Facebook was a challenge.

One of the biggest problem Mark Zuckerberg faced was how to attract investors and bring money to the company. The problem of funding is one such issue that Mark Zuckerberg overcame by running a few advertisements on its website initially. In 2004 when there wasn’t any outside funding available, Mark put his own money into his business. It was a challenge for Mark Zuckerberg to find potential lead investors and it was required that Facebook must reach 1.5 million users by the end of 2004 in order to get the first angel Investment which they narrowly missed but the loan was still allowed to them. When in 2005 the Accel Partners agreed to make venture capital investment deal with Facebook, they expanded its board to five seats out of which two were still empty and it was on Mark Zuckerberg to nominate anybody for the seats. At the time Microsoft invested in Facebook in 2007 , it bought the ‘preferred stock’ and had the ‘liquidation preferences’ over the common stockholders; it was a risk to Facebook if any day Facebook gets sold. It was until later that Zuckerberg filed for an IPO that raised $16 billion making Facebook the third largest in U.S history, but it also required Facebook to add bold revenue streams to justify such big valuation.

3. Mark Zuckerberg needed Critical Mass of Users to be Successful

• How to create hype among users.
• Mark wanted to overcome people’s tendency to be lazy.

Critical mass means getting a sufficient number of adopters or long term users of any innovation in the social system in such a manner that the rate of adoption becomes self-sustaining and it leads to further growth. Before the launch of Facebook on the big platform, Mark Zuckerberg knew his start-up would have to face this obstacle which can be resolved only by achieving critical mass. If good ideas would just market themselves then the energy could be solely devoted to making cool things, said Zuckerberg, but this is something which needed to be garnered by efficiency and hard work, in order to survive, which Mark did. Due to critical mass, Facebook will never have to charge people for access to basic tools.

Related-   Mark Zuckerberg’s Secrets of Success

4. Decision Making was the toughest part for Mark Zuckerberg

• What will be the consequences of turning down acquisition offers from every big company?
• Whom to hire for the most important post of the company, i.e. The COO & CFO.

As the business starts to grow it becomes more and more critical to make decisions on every level. Each decision opens the way for numerous other decisions. It is always necessary to ask the right question in the face of any problem. A former employee said that Initially the company, Mark Zuckerberg approached every problem by asking “Does it help us grow?” The genuine value of business planning and basic leadership is to distinguish the difficulties and pitfalls and plan around them before they happen, instead of getting caught unaware by them when the business is already set in motion.

5. Choosing What To Sell and To Whom

• How to protect Facebook from the rumors of its sale.
• Announcing the verdict of Facebook being an independent company.

Developing organizations confront a scope of difficulties. As a business develops, distinctive issues and opportunities demand diverse solutions because what worked a year back might not be the best approach now. Like every entrepreneur, Mark Zuckerberg was also having problem in deciding what to sell and whom to sell during his early days of Facebook. As he was one only one of his kind. The sales negotiation of Zuckerberg’s company was a major challenge when MySpace was sold to NewsCorp in 2005. At first, there were rumors of the possible sale of Facebook to a larger media company wherein Mark had already stated that he didn’t want to sell the company. Later in 2006, there were serious talks between Yahoo and Facebook for the acquisition of Facebook. It was in 2007 that Zuckerberg totally took the chance and shut the doors in the face of buyers by saying that he wasn’t looking to sell Facebook and he wants it to remain independent, at the time when the company’s worth was around 8 billion dollars.

6. Mark had to prevent the Invasion of Privacy

• How to confide in 500 million users.
• What strategy to implement for 100% protection of information.

In 2005 and 2006 Mark was interviewed in detail about the privacy of its users’ information. With the launch of every new product on its website, Facebook insists the users to share more and more of their personal information. The claim was that Facebook probably sells the users’ information in order to make money. It was said that the FTC and members of Congress have been looking into it; moreover, privacy groups lodged complaints against the privacy policy of the website. Zuckerberg said “We do not allow the applications to share personal information, plus, the advertisers can’t have access to it. But if application runners share it with the advertisers, we disable their functioning on our website, we shut them down. We make sure that people have control over their privacy and it will become the most fundamental thing on the internet”.

Image Credit

Want to Start Your Business?

Check Our Products & Services

• Web & App Development
• Online Business Promotion
• Promotional SMS

You May Also Like…

12 Ways to Increase Profits of Your Business [2021]

Jun 9, 2021

If you want to increase profits in your business(es) then first you need to understand that “Increase in Revenue” is...

Grow Your Business in One Month {2021 Updated}

Jun 8, 2021

I appreciate the fact that you started your own business and differentiated yourself from the crowd but you should...

Increase Your Business Revenue Exponentially {2021 Updated}

Jun 5, 2021

We all are bound by the universal law that nothing is stagnant or permanent in this entire universe. Either we will...

10 Comments

Hey, very informative article. thanks for sharing .

Hey, this article was very helpful

Great informative article, thanks

Glad you find it helpful 🙂

This helped me with my business problem-solving assessment. Thank you ?

Really helpful, thank you very much.

Very helpful

This was very helpful with my assignment, Thanks!

Glad you find it helpful 😊

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

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

Submit Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .