Sep 17, 2024 08:45 AM IST
Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged a major career mistake related to political miscalculations, particularly regarding Facebook’s role in 2016 US election.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reflected on one of the biggest mistakes in his career which was a “political miscalculation”. The tech boss revealed that Facebook spent a lot of time apologising for its content moderation issues which were allegedly out of the company’s control which he considers as a “20-year mistake”.
He said on a podcast, “Some of the things they were asserting that we were doing or were responsible for, I don’t actually think we were. 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.”
He added, “One of the things that I look back on and regret is, I think we accepted other people’s view of some of the things that they were asserting that we were doing wrong, or were responsible for, that I don’t actually think we were. There were a lot of things that we did mess up and that we needed to fix. But I think that there’s this view where, when you’re a company and someone says that there’s an issue…the right instinct is to take ownership. Say, maybe it’s not all our thing, but we’re going to fully own this problem, we’re going to take responsibility, we’re going to fix it.”
In the remarks, Mark Zuckerberg was referring to Facebook being criticized for its part in Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016. At the time, a firm called Cambridge Analytica took Facebook users’ data and attempted to use it to influence voters to choose Donald Trump, it was reported. Allegations also included the use of Facebook by foreign to influence the US election after which the firm and Mark Zuckerberg testified.
Mark Zuckerberg said he regretted not being more outspoken about the pressure from the US government at the time.
Now I have found the right balance on political issues and in the future, I would “push back if something like this happens again”, Mark Zuckerberg asserted.