Topics: Mark Zuckerberg, Politics, US News, Facebook, Meta, Donald Trump
Mark Zuckerberg has opened up about the '20-year mistake' he made while running Facebook.
The 40-year-old began setting up what has gone on to be known as social media site Facebook in his second year at Harvard University, and he is now chairman of its parent platform Meta - which also owns Instagram - and considered one of the most successful businessmen in the world.
However, his success and billionaire status doesn't mean Zuckerberg hasn't had some bumps in the road along the way and there's one mistake he regrets more than others, although it's not quite about what you'd expect.
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On his road to becoming one of the world's richest men, Zuckerberg's career has been dotted with its fair share of controversy - from data harvesting to violations of user privacy, to whistleblowers coming forward and being accused of not doing enough to protect children from exploitation on his platforms.
Oh and who could forget Zuckerberg's run-in with former president of the US Donald Trump?
Facebook was accused of misinformation about the 2016 presidential elections being spread on its platform and the former president has repeatedly claimed - without evidence - that the Facebook founder intervened in the 2020 presidential election, as per The Independent.
Trump alleges in his upcoming book, as per Politico, that Zuckerberg wanted to sway the election in favor of Joe Biden who was inaugurated as President on January 20, 2021.
And it would appear that Zuckerberg's biggest regret over the last 20 years of his career has to do with the more 'political' side of his role.
Appearing at the Chase Center on Tuesday (September 10) in discussion with Acquired podcast hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, Zuckerberg admitted there's 'a lot of things' that Facebook 'did wrong' over the years.
However, 'one of the things' he looks back on and 'regret[s]' is that Facebook 'accepted other people's view of some of the things that they were asserting that [Facebook] were doing wrong or were responsible for that [he doesn't] actually think [Facebook] were' responsible for.
He continued, as quoted by Platformer: "When it’s a political problem [...] there are people operating in good faith who are identifying a problem and want something to be fixed, and there are people who are just looking for someone to blame.
"And if your view is 'I’m going to take responsibility for all this stuff' - people are basically blaming social media and the tech industry for all these things in society - if we’re saying, we’re really gonna do our part to fix this stuff, I think there were a bunch of people who just took that and were like, oh, you're taking responsibility for that? Let me like, kick you for more stuff."
Zuckerberg resolved: "Honestly, I think we should have been firmer about and clearer about which of the things we actually felt like we had a part in and which ones we didn't.
"And my guess is if the IPO was a year and a half mistake, I think that the political miscalculation was a 20 year mistake."
Whether Zuckerberg is indirectly talking about his beef with Trump or other moments Facebook has faced backlash, well, make of it what you will.
