FACEBOOK AT 20
Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Deserve Praise For His Lame Apology
We’ve heard too many excuses from him, and he should step down as CEO of Meta
Facebook turned 20 on February 4, and founder Mark Zuckerberg had a birthday gift from my fellow journalists.
It came during a Senate hearing on children’s online safety that focused on victims like 14-year-old Englyn Roberts, who killed herself after viewing disturbing content on social media. Englyn had seen a video of a mock hanging on Instagram.
As the CEO of Meta, Zuckerberg owns Instagram, and a senator asked if he if wanted to apologize. Zuckerberg rose from his chair, turned to face his victims’ parents, and said:
“I’m sorry for everything you have all been through. No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered, and this is why we invested so much and are going to continue doing industry-leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things that your families had to suffer.”
It was the kind of non-apology apology we’ve heard often from Zuckerberg, one that the Associated Press saw as part of his long “apology tour.” He expressed no regret that the simulated hanging had been posted. He made no offer to compensate victims of abuse on his platforms. The self-serving plug for his “industry-leading efforts” didn’t help.
Zuckerberg’s sorry-not-sorry tour goes back to when he said he “absolutely” regretted calling the early adopters of Facebook “dumb fucks” — a full ten years after he’d maligned them.
Blaming a woman for his mistakes
His “apology tour” has included his feeble apology for giving the firm Cambridge Analytica access to the data of millions Facebook users, a trove reportedly used in the presidential campaign that preceded the election of Donald Trump. Zuckerberg blamed a woman, his second-in-command Sheryl Sandberg, for that scandal, the Wall Street Journal reported.
You’d think that after all that, reporters would have pounced when Zuckerberg made his lame apology to parents of children who’d killed themselves after seeing disturbing content on his or other platforms.
At the very least, news organizations besides the AP might have said, in effect, “Mark, we’ve heard things like that from you before.”
But no. The media instead fell back on its usual Pop-Tarts version of the news, heavy on sugar and empty calories passing for substance.
You might not be surprised that Zuckerberg’s pseudoapology drew praise from conservative media. Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany moralized: “That was the right thing to do.”
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But the moderate and liberal media chimed in, too. Four reporters for the Washington Post called Zuckerberg’s gesture “an extraordinary moment.” ABC News said it was “powerful.”
Dana Bash gushed on CNN: “Wow, what we all just saw on live television is going to be a moment for the ages.”
Bash might have added: “It was at least as much of ‘a moment for the ages’ as when Zuckerberg apologized in 2018 for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.” Who remembers those words now?
How the U.S. should protect minors from online harms is one of the toughest moral and legal questions facing Congress and the country. The bipartisan Senate hearing on Jan. 31 didn’t resolve it.
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Passing the buck to Apple and Google Play
Multiple bills aimed at protecting minors on social media platforms have been introduced in Congress, including the Kids Online Safety Act.
Yet — urgent as the need is to keep children safe is — some of those bills inspire fear in those of us who see free speech as the foundation of all American freedoms.
On that count, Meta has proved a deeply flawed steward of its moral if not legal obligations. At the Senate hearing Zuckerberg again downplayed his responsibilities, arguing that Apple and Google Play should manage parental consent for apps, not Meta.
Congress and the nation must balance the need to protect children with the their responsibility to preserve freedom of speech. Finding the best way to do that may take years, if it’s even possible.
In the meantime, Zuckerberg’s leadership of Meta has made the situation worse, and he appears out of ideas for how to improve it. Shareholders should demand his ouster, but don’t look for that to happen anytime soon.
A few days after the Senate hearing, Zuckerberg announced the Meta will issue its first stock dividend. Its stock promptly surged more than 20%.
No doubt that spike will prove his worth to latter-day apostles of Milton Friedman, who said that the main responsibility of a corporation is to increase value for shareholders.
Others of us can only argue that as a 20th birthday present to the world, Zuckerberg should take the money and run from Meta.
@JaniceHarayda is an award-winning critic and journalist who has been a writer and editor for Glamour and a reporter for two large daily newspapers. She writes about books, the media, and related topics on Medium.
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