Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reveals biggest mistake of his career

At an hour-long interview with hosts of the popular podcast Acquired, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had one of the most revealing interviews of his career. At the interview, Zuckerberg spoke about the biggest mistake of his career, and simultaneously declared that he is done apologising. Is this part of the rebranded Zuckerberg? Maybe. Lately, we have been seeing a lot of the human side of the Meta CEO. He has been actively sharing with the world what he does in his personal time. We know he is raising Wagyu and Angus cattle at his Ko’olau Ranch on Kauai, we know he loves to surf and that he recently competed in his first jiu-jitsu tournament and won several medals. Zuckerberg 2.0 also looks different with his bouncy curls, oversized t-shirts, and the “epic” new gold chain. And now we know one more thing about the Facebook co-founder, his days of apologising are over.
Mark Zuckerberg says the biggest mistake of his career was a “political miscalculation” that he described as a “20-year mistake.” This was most likely a hint at the political aftermath following the 2016 US election, where Facebook was widely blamed for its role in the spread of misinformation. Cambridge Analytica’s misuse of Facebook user data, combined with foreign actors leveraging the platform to influence voters, cast a shadow over the company. But Zuckerberg believes he took too much ownership for problems he believed weren’t entirely Facebook’s fault. He emphasised that, in hindsight, Facebook should have been more discerning about the issues it accepted responsibility for.
“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,” he said during the interview.
Zuckerberg acknowledged that while many criticisms of Facebook were valid, others were driven by political agendas. The tech industry and social media were blamed for societal problems that extended beyond their control. He explained that Facebook’s instinct was to accept responsibility and commit to fixing perceived problems, but this led to further blame.
“When it’s a political problem…Sometimes there are people who are 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 added.
Looking back, Zuckerberg expressed regret over not being clearer about the limits of Facebook’s responsibility. He believes the company could have pushed back harder on unfounded allegations, and it may take another decade to fully repair the company’s damaged reputation. The Meta CEO, however, says he has now found the right balance on political issues.
This era of mistakes saw Facebook invest heavily in content moderation and policy reforms, including the setting up of the Oversight Board — which was a bold, albeit imperfect, solution. Despite these efforts, Facebook continues to grapple with mistrust from users and governments alike. That said, regardless of the existing doubts about privacy on the platform, its services continue to be used by billions of users around the globe.