Mark Zuckerberg is (still) not sorry.
In prepared remarks during Facebook’s Q3 earnings call today, Zuckerberg blamed the recent avalanche of bad press for the social network on “a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company.”
Facebook’s CEO doubled down, running through a checklist of things the company has done around safety and security, projects that will come with a $5 billion price tag in 2021. “It makes a good soundbite to say that we don't solve these impossible tradeoffs because we're just focused on making money, but the reality is these questions are not primarily about our business, but about balancing difficult social values,” he said.
Zuckerberg briefly touched on introspection; “I worry about the incentives that we're creating for other companies to be as introspective as we have been,” he said. But his remarks—forceful and angry at times—didn’t really look inward or take responsibility for anything. Instead, the media, lawmakers, and society as a whole are to blame, he argued.
Polarization has been around in the US since “before I was born” in 1984, according to Zuckerberg. “If social media is not the main driver of these issues, then it probably can't fix them by itself either,” he said.
“I've repeatedly called for regulation to provide clarity because I don't think companies should be making so many of these decisions ourselves,” Zuckerberg said. But that’s a convenient fallback—glacial is Congress’ favorite speed, and an army of lobbyists will be at the ready should lawmakers make a move.
Whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former product manager at Facebook, is among those trying to get politicians to act. She testified before lawmakers in London today, shortly after several high-profile news outlets posted stories about documents from the social network, which they dubbed the Facebook Papers.
Zuckerberg said today that Facebook “can't change the underlying media dynamics,” and said his focus is on people, not the press. “The reason we've been able to succeed for almost two decades is because we keep evolving and building. Facebook started in a dorm room and grew into a global website. We invented the News Feed and a new kind of ads platform. We became a mobile-first experience. And then we grew a whole family of apps that serve billions of people."
And yet, the company has struggled to stop Groups that spread dangerous misinformation, in part because of a recommendation system that quickly veers off into questionable territory, Facebook’s own employees found. It’s all too easy for online chatter to spill over into real-world violence, in the US and abroad.