What does the man who runs the world’s most powerful tech network, alone, think about its place in the world? He believes it is helping to make the planet a better place. Even if it causes some harm — mostly to the citizens and organizations whose existence is jeopardized by its increase.
Of course, the first part is what you’d expect the Facebook CEO to say in public. However, the second component, which Mark Zuckerberg also mentioned today in an interview where he announced plans to create a collection of audio tools, is a very novel and significant concept.
Sort of, because it’s what Zuckerberg and many of his colleagues — and, indeed, many Silicon Valley residents — have been thinking and saying for a long time: that the stuff they were making was good for society, even if it caused major problems along the way. That when it was said and done, they were doing more good than damage. In a memo to his colleagues in June 2016, Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth wrote, “De facto fine.” However, Zuckerberg and his team haven’t spoken like this in public in a long time — specifically, since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, which was followed by a string of damaging and humiliating controversies and revelations.
They’ve been in a defensive crouch since then, admitting — over and over — that they have a great deal of responsibility and work to do. Not coincidentally, they’re also telling government regulators all over the world that they want more oversight so they can be even more accountable.
That public stance makes sense in a world where Facebook (along with other major tech companies) is being scrutinized by politicians, and where users who once praised Facebook are now resenting it.
But it would be strange if the guy who created Facebook and still runs it thought Facebook was Fundamentally Bad, despite the fact that several of his top lieutenants have quit in recent years and his rank-and-file workers frequently question whether they’re harming the planet. That is not what Zuckerberg believes. And today, in an interview with tech journalist (and Vox Media contributor) Casey Newton, we got to hear him making his case for Facebook out loud.
Facebook, and technology like Facebook, is fine, according to Zuckerberg, because it helps people — individual people, not Big Faceless Authorities — build the new, despite the fact that it can undermine the old. And, perhaps most importantly, many of those who complain about Facebook and similar technology are afraid of losing control.
It’s a way of thinking about the world that used to be common in Silicon Valley and among technologists, and it was lauded for it. It’s a mentality that’s equal parts Whole Earth Catalog and The Fountainhead, with a healthy dose of artistic destruction thrown in for good measure.
We’ve heard a lot less of that recently as the world grapples with some of the unforeseen effects Silicon Valley has given us in recent decades, such as massive networks that can easily and efficiently deceive large swaths of the population about objective truth. But it’s clear that Zuckerberg is still a believer.
