case study of mark zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg’s Leadership Style Case Study

Determination, intelligence, self-confidence, works cited.

Few CEOs have been subject to as much criticism and attacks as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Most famously, he was portrayed as the villain in the movie ‘The Social Network’. Shareholders have complained about his leadership and failure to increase the stock price of Facebook, and others have claimed he is socially inept and too young and immature to be a CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation.

However, in spite of this criticism, Zuckerberg is unarguably one of the most successful CEOs and entrepreneurs in corporate history. His small project that he created while he was a college student has become world dominant in the social media business and is still growing and expanding. So despite all of the criticism he clearly has been a successful leader.

The unique combination of various personal traits and features of character allowed Mark Zuckerberg to reach unprecedented heights. A review of these exceptional attributes that were necessary in order to create a flawless attitude will be provided below.

According to Hiriyappa, Mark Zuckerberg possesses the following qualities: intelligence, self-confidence, determination and integrity (211). In summarizing Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership qualities, Tim Bajarin, President of Creative Strategies, Inc., said “the number one thing we’ve learned from Zuckerberg is to take the vision you have, put all your energy into it, and get a lot of smart people around you to execute on it” (Namin-Hedayati par. 5).

From his young ages, Mark had displayed a great interest in programming and creating various transmission mechanisms and games. While studying in the middle school, he did not give up his passion; furthermore, by the time of entering Phillips Exeter Academy in high school, Mark had already programmed a tool that would help his parents to work in the office and communicate with each other. Zuckerberg has retained his fascination with computer programming for many years; and, as a result, the idea of Facebook came to him while he was still at the Phillips Exeter Academy. “At that time, he only planned to offer service only to students within the Ivy League as these students were having problems in networking with one another. Afterward, he made a decision about spreading Facebook to other schools and universities with the help of his roommates” (Wood par. 2). Being so confident and passionate about his occupation reveals determination.

Despite the obvious general erudition and outstanding skills in computer programming, Zuckerberg was intelligent enough to be open for new knowledge. It is well known that Zuckerberg always makes efforts in order to learn more and receive guidance from the most influential businessmen on the planet, for example, Warren Buffett. Moreover, Zuckerberg had never concealed his discourses with Steve Jobs, in which Mark was receiving answers for the issues of business organization and efficient leadership.

While aiming his attention towards building his company, Zuckerberg is considered to be willing to gain control over every possible situation. This desire is a consequence of the self-confidence bordering on the arrogance and inability to trust anyone to do the job appropriately. Moreover, Zuckerberg appears to be of afraid of showing it not only to his workers but to the public as well, which indicates his integrity and directness.

Mark Zuckerberg is a prime example of an autocratic leader. The Facebook evolved into the biggest social network on the planet. However, even when the company changes its status to public, Zuckerberg would still reserve the right to make and dispute every critical decision, while the financiers and the board of directors is obliged to have this right. Moreover, the leadership of Zuckerberg is interpreted as reassuring and contentious at the same time. He has proven himself as an individual who consistently appeals for perpetual modernization and expansion; as a result, Zuckerberg had determined his passion for disputes and challenges. He is known for occasionally neglecting his position of the CEO of the company and making the critical decisions by himself, thus disregarding the opinion of his team.

As for the leadership style among his followers, Zuckerberg often prompts his team to make and present the production and decision more that it was set at the beginning. This method is known to be confounding and stressful; however, Zuckerberg has proven it to be quite effective, as the workers create more output that it was expected from them with limiting the participation of the workers in the most aspects of the work. The CEO of the Facebook makes an attempt at forcing his employees to work more in shorter terms and under enormous pressure, which is also an indication of autocratic leadership (Northouse 67). Moreover, Zuckerberg does not need any consent from the board directors and he does not allow them to intimidate himself, as he is well aware of the value and importance of his company and his position in it.

According to Hiriyappa, “an autocratic leader thinks that his subordinate is intelligent enough, he would not be in that subordinate position. He assumes that unintelligent subordinates are immature, unreliable and immature persons. Therefore, they should be constantly watched in the course of their work” (205). That was exactly the position of Zuckerberg towards his employees. On the contrary, Mark Zuckerberg is well aware of his deficiencies in his leadership style, which is why he started to be more receptive towards the advice from his workers. Moreover, he grants his subordinates an opportunity to present their advancements and renovations for the Facebook. It could be said that Zuckerberg is replacing his autocratic leadership with partially transformational style (Minja and Kirimi 112).

The leadership style of Zuckerberg has both negative and positive aspects. The autocratic approach is believed to be rather efficient and beneficial for the company, its development, and income. Despite the fact that autocratic leaders lack the communication with their employees, they often come up with more productive ideas. However, the autocratic leader creates stressful circumstances for the workers; as a result, they will not be able to work at the company with autocratic approach for the extended period of time (Zaccaro, Gilbert, Thor and Michael Mumford 320).

By his style of leadership, Mark Zuckerberg has made Facebook one of the most well-known and prominent websites of the Web history. Even today, the company faces the auspicious future in incomes. On the contrary, there are negative issues that the company is looking at because of the autocratic approach of Zuckerberg. By cutting back the privileges of stockholders and the liability of the board directors, the company will most likely create two diverse stockholder foundations, which will be guided by diverse concerns. “This, in turn, may and probably will fuel proxy contests and boardroom or family struggles that ultimately will screw common shareholders according to Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS)” (Wood par. 5).

Hiriyappa, Bahadur. Organizational Behavior, New Delhi, India: New Age International, 2009. Print.

Minja, David, and Ardon Barine Kirimi. Transformational Corporate Leadership, Franklin, Tennessee: Integrity Publishers Inc, 2012. Print.

Namin-Hedayati, Farnaz. n.d. Mark Zuckerberg’s Leadership Qualities . Web.

Northouse, Peter. Leadership Theory and Practice (Sixth Edition ), Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, 2012. Print.

Wood, Robert. “ Mark Zuckerberg’s $2 Billion Tax Bill Double Last Year, Higher Than Most Billionaries .” Forbes. Web.

Zaccaro, Stephen, Gilbert, Janelle, Thor, Kirk, and Michael Mumford. “Leadership and Social Intelligence: Linking Social Perceptiveness and Behavioral Flexibility to Leader Effectiveness.” Leadership Quarterly 2.1 (1991): 317-331. Print.

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1. IvyPanda . "Mark Zuckerberg's Leadership Style." March 21, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/mark-zuckerbergs-leadership-style/.

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IvyPanda . "Mark Zuckerberg's Leadership Style." March 21, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/mark-zuckerbergs-leadership-style/.

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The Cambridge Analytica scandal changed the world – but it didn't change Facebook

A year after devastating revelations of data misuse, Mark Zuckerberg still hasn’t fulfilled his promises to reform

I t can be hard to remember from down here, beneath the avalanche of words and promises and apologies and blogposts and manifestos that Facebook has unleashed upon us over the course of the past year, but when the Cambridge Analytica story broke one year ago, Mark Zuckerberg’s initial response was a long and deafening silence .

It took five full days for the founder and CEO of Facebook – the man with total control over the world’s largest communications platform – to emerge from his Menlo Park cloisters and address the public. When he finally did, he did so with gusto, taking a new set of talking points (“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you”) on a seemingly unending roadshow, from his own Facebook page to the mainstream press to Congress and on to an oddly earnest discussion series he’s planning to subject us to at irregular intervals for the rest of 2019.

The culmination of all that verbosity came earlier this month, when Zuck unloaded a 3,000-word treatise on Facebook’s “privacy-focused” future (a phrase that somehow demands both regular quotation marks and ironic scare quotes), a missive that was perhaps best described by the Guardian’s Emily Bell as “the nightmarish college application essay of an accomplished sociopath”.

The so-called pivot to privacy is in many ways the logical conclusion to the earth-shaking (and market-moving) response to the Cambridge Analytica story, which plunged Facebook into the greatest crisis in its then 14-year history. After nearly a year of its critics demanding that it respect users’ privacy, here was Facebook saying: “Fine, privacy you shall have.” (More on whether what’s being offered is actually privacy later.)

But it’s worth thinking back to those five days of silence, when the contours of the scandal took shape and revealed themselves with an uncanny distinction: when it came to Facebook, the Cambridge Analytica story did not uncover anything new. The basic facts had already been reported , in the same publication, 16 months previously: Facebook had allowed someone to extract vast amounts of private information about vast numbers of people from its system, and that entity had passed the data along to someone else, who had used it for political ends.

What changed was how we saw those facts. It was as if we had all gone away on a long voyage, returned home to an uneasy sense that something was different, and were not immediately able to grasp that it was ourselves who had changed and not the rooms and furnishings that surrounded us.

Facebook’s PR machine spent much of the first 24 hours after the story broke engaged in a pedantic and self-defeating argument over whether or not what had occurred constituted a “data breach”. By information security standards, Facebook was correct that what occurred was not a “data breach” – as representatives wrote , “no systems were infiltrated, and no passwords or sensitive pieces of information were stolen or hacked”.

But a year later, and in the aftermath of an actual, vast data breach in October , it is apparent that a data breach would have been easier for Facebook’s reputation to weather. Almost every company has suffered a big data breach at this point; only Facebook has endured such an existential reckoning. That’s because what happened with Cambridge Analytica was not a matter of Facebook’s systems being infiltrated, but of Facebook’s systems working as designed: data was amassed, data was extracted, and data was exploited.

At the end of 2018, Zuck debuted a new talking point , asserting that in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook had “fundamentally altered [its] DNA”.

Whether Zuckerberg actually believes that is an open question, but it’s clear that few outside Facebook do. “While it appears that Facebook is suddenly ‘woke’ to privacy issues, it’s safe to assume it’s business as usual there,” said Ashkan Soltani, a former chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission.

“They keep actually putting growth and profits above designing a platform that’s predicated on the needs of its users,” said Lindsey Barrett, a teaching fellow and staff attorney at Georgetown’s Communications and Technology Clinic. As a particularly blatant example of this mindset, Barrett cited Facebook’s insistence on using phone numbers that users provided for security reasons for non-security purposes.

Zuckerberg did make a number of specific promises after the Cambridge Analytica story broke. I asked the company for an update on a number of these, and can only offer the Harvard dropout an “incomplete”.

On 19 March 2018, Facebook said it was pursuing a forensic audit of Cambridge Analytica and other parties involved in the data misuse, but it stood down after the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) began its own investigation. A Facebook spokeswoman said on 13 March that the company was still waiting for approval from the ICO to perform any such audit.

On 21 March 2018, Zuckerberg promised that Facebook would investigate “all apps that had access to large amounts of information” through the platform before 2014, audit any app with suspicious activity and ban any developer who misused personally identifiable information. Facebook provided regular updates on this investigation until 22 August 2018, when the company revealed in a blogpost that it had investigated thousands of third-party apps and suspended “more than 400”. Seven months later, a spokeswoman said that the investigation was continuing, but provided the same numbers: thousands investigated, more than 400 banned.

On 1 May, Facebook made its most ambitious promise – the creation of a “ clear history ” tool that would allow users to force Facebook to delete all the information it gathers about users as they browse the web. At the time, Facebook said the tool would “take a few months to build”. As BuzzFeed News pointed out in February, it’s been more than a few months. A Facebook spokeswoman did not provide a timeline for when the tool might actually be available, saying that it was taking time to get the tool right.

The other major promise – the big one – is the pivot to “privacy” announced this month. The actual details of this plan are much more mundane, and involve much less actual privacy, than Zuckerberg’s manifesto would like us to believe. The CEO is planning to integrate all three of his company’s messaging platforms – WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger – into one, which will have end-to-end encryption.

The overwhelming consensus from privacy experts is that this plan has little to do with protecting privacy and everything to do with protecting market share. “They are incredibly adept at strategically using privacy as a justification for an anticompetitive strategy – and the shift to encrypted-messaging or ‘delete history’ makes sense when you consider the impending regulatory pressures around interoperability and data-portability,” said Soltani.

The most obvious of those impending pressures is the increasingly popular idea of taking anti-trust action against Facebook, an idea that has gone from the fringes of the thinktank world to the center of a major 2020 Democratic presidential candidate’s agenda with dramatic speed.

“Once the integration of those three messaging platforms happens, it will be almost technically impossible to break Facebook up,” said Jonathan Albright, director of the Digital Forensics Initiative at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. “It won’t happen. You can’t do it. And that’s exactly why they’re moving so quickly to do it.”

That “ Break Up Big Tech ” would be a 2020 campaign slogan was unimaginable just two years ago. Zuckerberg, lest we forget, spent much of 2017 cosplaying a politician on his very own whistlestop tour around the country.

And yet, here we are. The Cambridge Analytica revelations may not have changed Facebook, but they did change us. Our eyes are now open. The question is what we will do.

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Mark Zuckerberg: Founder and CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook)

Mark Zuckerberg is a self-taught computer programmer and co-founder, chair, and chief executive officer of Meta ( META ), formerly known as Facebook. Originally named Facemash, Zuckerberg founded the social networking site in his Harvard University dorm room in 2004 along with Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin.

According to Bloomberg , Zuckerberg's net worth as of June 10, 2022, was about $68.2 billion.

Key Takeaways

• Mark Zuckerberg is a self-taught computer programmer and the co-founder, chair, and CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook).
• According to Bloomberg , Zuckerberg's net worth as of June 10, 2022, was about $68.2 billion.
• Facebook has 2.93 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2022, making it the biggest social network in the world.
• In 2015, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, founded the Chan Zuckerberg foundation with the goal of delivering "...personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people, and building strong communities."
• In April 2018, Zuckerberg testified on Capitol Hill about Facebook's use of users' information, including the sharing of 87 million users' information to Cambridge Analytica.

Investopedia / Alison Czinkota

On May 14, 1984, Mark Zuckerberg was born in White Plains, New York. As a child, he showed an affinity for computers. He learned the BASIC programming language at a nearby college, and at the age of 12, he developed an instant-messaging application that his father used in his office.

Zuckerberg attended Harvard University but dropped out after his sophomore year to focus on developing Facebook. The site grew out of two earlier ventures: FaceMash, a website for ranking the attractiveness of other Harvard students, and HarvardConnection.com, an online social networking platform.

In 2004, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, the three credited founders of HarvardConnection.com, sued Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing intellectual property from the website. They reached a multi-million dollar settlement of cash and stock options in 2008. The Winklevoss twins tried to reopen the lawsuit in 2011, but the court denied their request.

Facebook IPO and Acquisitions

In mid-2005, Facebook raised $12.7 million in venture capital and expanded access to hundreds of universities and high schools. One year later, the social network opened to the general public, and Yahoo! offered $1 billion to buy the company—a bid that was swiftly rejected by Zuckerberg.

In 2012, Facebook went public and became the most successful Internet initial public offering (IPO) in history when it raised $16 billion. That same year, Facebook bought the photo-sharing application Instagram, and Zuckerberg married Priscilla Chan in a surprise wedding the day after the IPO.

Meta has acquired dozens of companies over the years, including Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, WhatsApp for $22 billion in cash and shares in 2014, Oculus VR for $2 billion in 2014, and several other companies ranging from artificial intelligence (AI) to identification platforms.

Wealth and Philanthropy

Zuckerberg has made headlines for his philanthropy , including his 2010 donation of $100 million to help schools in Newark, N.J. In 2014, the publication Philanthropy ranked Zuckerberg and Chan the most generous American donors of the previous year, after they donated 18 million shares of Facebook stock to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, in Mountain View, Calif.

On Dec. 1, 2015, Zuckerberg and Chan published a letter to their daughter Max, in which they announced the creation of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative "to join people across the world to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation."

In the post, Zuckerberg and Chan said the "initial areas of focus will be personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people, and building strong communities" and that "we will give 99% of our Facebook shares—currently about $45 billion—during our lives to advance this mission."

Controversy and Cambridge Analytica

Meta has been accused, nearly since its inception, of collecting and selling the personal data, posts, and instant messages of its users. These accusations mounted shortly after the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections, with some alleging that U.S. voters had been under the influence of targeted ads financed by Russia. 

In March 2018, media outlets including The New York Times and The Observer reported that U.K.-based political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica  had paid an outside researcher to collect data on 50 million Facebook users without their permission . The New York Times reported that Cambridge Analytica's goal was to use the data for its trademark "psychographic modeling," with the aim of "reading voters' minds" and potentially influencing the outcome of elections. 

$25 Billion

The estimated ad revenue of Instagram in 2021.

In April 2018, Facebook disclosed that the information of 87 million users had been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, and not the 50 million as earlier reported.

Later that month, Zuckerberg appeared on Capitol Hill to testify before House and Senate committees about Facebook's use of consumer data. In prepared remarks before the Senate, Zuckerberg noted that Facebook had been beneficial in connecting people during the #MeToo movement and various disasters.

The statement went on to say that Zuckerberg and Facebook heard about Cambridge Analytica's involvement from the media, just like everyone else. Zuckerberg also outlined actions that Facebook intended to undertake to prevent future incidents of this nature, including "safeguarding our platform," "investigating other apps," and "building better controls."

How Does Facebook Make Money?

Facebook makes the bulk of its money through ads. The company sells ad space on its many platforms. These platforms include Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Facebook (Meta) also makes money by allowing users to pay to promote their pages/posts on the various platforms, which is also a form of advertising.

What Is Mark Zuckerberg's Net Worth?

As of June 10, 2022, Mark Zuckerberg's net worth is $68.2 billion. He earned his wealth as the founder and largest shareholder of Meta (formerly Facebook).

Does Mark Zuckerberg Make $1 a Year?

Technically, Mark Zuckerberg makes a salary of $1 a year at Facebook. His wealth, however, is tied up in the shares of Meta (formerly Facebook), of which he is the largest shareholder, making him one of the richest men in the world.

Zuckerberg started Facebook from his dorm room, turning it into one of the largest companies in the world. Through Facebook and its many acquisitions, such as Instagram and WhatsApp, Zuckerberg controls the majority of the way consumers consume content and interact with one another.

Bloomberg. " Mark Zuckerberg ."

Statista. " Number of Monthly Active Facebook Users Worldwide as of 1st Quarter 2022 ."

George Beahm. "Mark Zuckerberg: In His Own Words." Agate Publishing, 2018.

United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. " Facebook v. ConnectU, Inc. ," Pages 4902-4912.

Crunchbase. " Series A - Meta ."

Inc. " Peter Thiel Talks About the Day Mark Zuckerberg Turned Down Yahoo's $1 Billion ."

History. " Facebook Raises $16 Billion in Largest Tech IPO in U.S. History ."

Meta. " Facebook to Acquire Oculus ."

Meta. " Facebook to Acquire Instagram ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. " Form 8-K - October 4, 2014 ."

Cision PR Newswire. " New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker Join With Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Advance a National Model for Improving Public Schools ."

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. " Letter to Max ."

Statista. " Instagram - Statistics & Facts ."

Meta. " An Update on Our Plans to Restrict Data Access on Facebook ."

U.S. Senate. " Hearing Before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary and the United Sates Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation - April 10, 2018 - Testimony of Mark Zuckerberg, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Facebook ," Pages 1-3.

Business Insider. " Mark Zuckerberg Reveals Why He Only Makes $1 a Year ."

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Leader 360: Mark Zuckerberg

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Leader 360 provides an overview of the leadership style for a particular business leader covered in the related case study. Delivered entirely online, each Leader 360 is a compilation of publicly-available content prepared by an experienced editor. This Leader 360 provides an overview of Mark Zuckerberg's leadership style from different perspectives between 2006-2014. This resource includes questions for in-class discussion or to assign to students as homework, as well as a list of freely-available articles, videos, interviews, and more, to illustrate the various perspectives on the business leader. Related Case: Facebook

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Mark Zuckerberg on why Facebook is rebranding to Meta

The company wants to move past the ‘confusion and awkwardness’ of sharing a name with its main app.

By Alex Heath , a deputy editor and author of the Command Line newsletter. He’s covered the tech industry for over a decade at The Information and other outlets.

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For the first time in 17 years, Mark Zuckerberg has a new job title.

On Thursday, he officially became the CEO and chairman of Meta, the new parent company name for Facebook. The rebrand is about solidifying the social media giant as being about the metaverse , which Zuckerberg sees as the future of the internet. Zuckerberg is staying in control of everything. He told me in an interview that, unlike the founders of Google who stepped aside in 2015 when it became part of a holding company called Alphabet, he has no plans to give up the top job.

“I think we’re basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first.”

Instead, the change is about recognizing a shift inside the company that’s already taken place. Zuckerberg has been pouring billions of dollars — at least $10 billion this year alone — into building the metaverse, an expansive, immersive vision of the internet taken from the pages of sci-fi novels like Snow Crash and Ready Player One . “I think we’re basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first,” he told me this week over the phone. While details are slim, a unified account system is going to be introduced to span all of the company’s social apps, the Oculus Quest headset, Portal, and future devices. That means you won’t need a Facebook account to use the Quest.

The rebrand to Meta, announced by Zuckerberg today at the company’s annual Connect conference, has been a clandestine affair since he formally kicked off the project just over six months ago. The small handful of employees involved had to sign separate nondisclosure agreements, and Zuckerberg refused to tell me the name itself when we spoke the day before Connect. He said he had been thinking about rebranding the company ever since he bought Instagram and WhatsApp, in 2012 and 2014, but earlier this year he realized that it was time to make the change.

“I think that there was just a lot of confusion and awkwardness about having the company brand be also the brand of one of the social media apps,” he said. “I think it’s helpful for people to have a relationship with a company that is different from the relationship with any specific one of the products, that can kind of supersede all of that.”

Recent leaks had “nothing to bear” on the name change

Zuckerberg knows that the timing of this rebrand is suspect. Over the past few weeks, the company has been hit with a nonstop barrage of criticism, thanks to leaked internal documents provided to the media by a former employee named Frances Haugen. Facebook is perhaps the most scrutinized company in the world right now, and its brand has soured in the eyes of young people. To the many critics, distancing the company brand and Zuckerberg from the name Facebook will be seen as an evasion tactic.

According to Zuckerberg, the current cycle of bad news “had nothing to bear on this. Even though I think some people might want to make that connection, I think that’s sort of a ridiculous thing. If anything, I think that this is not the environment that you would want to introduce a new brand in.”

The metaverse as an idea isn’t new, but it wasn’t thrust into the mainstream conversation until Zuckerberg started talking about it publicly earlier this year. The concept originates from Snow Crash , a dystopian novel from the 1990s in which people flee the crumbling real world to be fully immersed in a virtual one. While he acknowledges that the origins of the word are a “con,” Zuckerberg is trying to reclaim the metaverse as a utopian idea that will unlock an entirely new economy of virtual goods and services.

In the next decade, he thinks most people will be spending time in a fully immersive, 3D version of the internet that spans not just Meta’s hardware such as the Quest, but devices made by others. He’s pushing his teams to build technology that could one day let you show up in a virtual space as a full-bodied avatar, or appear as a hologram of yourself in the real-world living room of your friend who lives across the planet.

What is the metaverse?

It depends who you ask, but it usually refers to an array of interconnected digital spaces, sometimes in VR, sometimes experienced through a social network, and sometimes including real-time reference points to the physical world. You can read more about it here .

He’s careful not to get into details, but he believes there will be a “pretty important role” for crypto technology like NFTs and smart contracts in the metaverse. “One of the big questions that people are going to have about virtual goods in the metaverse is, ‘Do I really get to own this thing?’” he told me. “‘Or is it just content that someone can basically just take away from me in the future?’ And I’m pretty sensitive to that given all the pressures that we’ve had to try to navigate around censorship, and what’s the definition of something that’s harmful versus when you have to get in the way of people being able to express something.”

The software underpinning Zuckerberg’s take on the metaverse is called Horizon. It’s part Minecraft meets Roblox with an application for work collaboration as well. Next year, the company plans to introduce Project Cambria, a high-end, mixed reality headset previewed at Connect that mixes virtual graphics with the real world in full color. It will have face and eye tracking to allow for more realistic avatars.

Also in the works is a pair of AR glasses called Nazaré. While they are still several years out, to Zuckerberg they have the potential to be as widely used as mobile phones are today. The idea is that, unlike a VR headset that takes you out of the real world, Nazaré will look like a normal pair of glasses with displays capable of overlaying computing onto the world around you. “These products are becoming decreasingly like what you would think of as a social media product today,” he said. “And I think just having a different identify for that is important.”

It’s unclear if this rebrand to Meta will achieve what Zuckerberg is aiming for, but there’s no question that it’s a bold move. The company is facing down new social media competitors, frustrated government regulators, and a new generation of potential users who view its core app as far from hip. The metaverse offers Zuckerberg a substantially new, maximalist direction to move toward. Now it needs to get to work.

Below is a transcript of my full interview with Zuckerberg. It has been edited for length and clarity:

Alex Heath: Can you explain why you’re doing this rebrand?

Mark Zuckerberg: At a high level, we did this segment reporting change on Monday as part of earnings. So we’re now looking at our business as two different segments. One for the social apps and one for future platforms basically. And the idea is that the metaverse work that we’re doing is not about any one of those segments. It’s not like Reality Labs is doing the work building the metaverse. It goes across all of this. The metaverse is going to be both future platforms and social experiences. 

So we wanted to have a new brand identity that, as you reported , is directionally aligned with the future vision that we’re working towards. There’s sort of a higher-level brand identity goal and then there’s a more technical and functional goal. The higher-level piece is that Facebook is the iconic social media brand. And increasingly we’re doing more than that. People think of us as a social media company, but the way we think about ourselves is that we’re a technology company that builds technology to help people connect with each other. We think that makes us different from the other companies because everyone else is trying to work on how people interact with technology, where as we we build technologies so that people can interact with each other. 

For us, it was never just about social media, and increasingly we’re moving beyond that. It felt like having the brand of the company be tied to the idea of social media and one of the specific products that we’re building there — because we now have Instagram and WhatsApp growing to be really important as well — felt increasingly like it didn’t encompass everything that we were doing. So we wanted to shift that to have something that is more evocative of the vision that we’re moving towards. 

“It’s helpful for people to have a relationship with a company that is different from the relationship with any specific one of the products.”

On a more functional and technical basis, I think that there was just a lot of confusion and awkwardness about having the company brand be also the brand of one of the social media apps. When people wanted to go sign into their Quest, we wanted them to sign in with their Facebook account because we wanted to have a single identity or account system for the company. Google has that, Apple has that. Microsoft has it. But for us, the issue is that if you’re signing into Quest or WhatsApp or Instagram with a Facebook account, I think that there was a confusion about, “Am I signing into this with my Facebook corporate account or is this going to be tied to my social media account?” People had concerns on Quest. “If I don’t want to use Facebook or if something happens and my account gets deactivated, is my device now going to get bricked?” That’s a concern that I think people shouldn’t have to have. People had concerns that, “If I sign into Instagram with this or if I sign into WhatsApp with it, does that mean that my data is somehow gonna get shared over here in a way that I didn’t want?” 

I think it’s helpful for people to have a relationship with a company that is different from the relationship with any specific one of the products, that can kind of supersede all of that. So from a functional perspective, I thought it was very important to have that. And as I looked out several years towards launching something like Nazaré, these products are becoming decreasingly like what you would think of as a social media product today. I think just having a different identify for that is important. 

When I thought about when was the best time to try to make that shift, it’s kind of like as soon as possible once you realize that you want to do that. So that’s what led us down this path. We’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I formally kicked off the project earlier this year. It was a little over more than six months ago. But this is a debate that we’ve been having for a long time inside the company, about whether we should do this. It’s something that I’ve been working with Alex Schultz on very closely since he became the CMO.

Is there a restructuring component of this functionally with how the organizations report to people as well? Or is it more just the brand?

There’s the financial reporting and segment reporting. There is the brand. There will be the account system. We’re not making org changes today as part of that. That might be something that I’ll consider in the future, but I don’t think that’s something that’s near term on the horizon.

You said you started this formally about six months ago. Is it at all a reaction to the brand baggage and the brand tax you guys sometimes refer to internally that Facebook has, and just wanting to distance from that? Or is it really more just looking ahead? I have to imagine it’s a mix of both.

We started well before the current cycle [of bad news]. I think the current cycle clearly had nothing to bear on this. Even though I think some people might want to make that connection, I think that’s sort of a ridiculous thing. If anything, I think that this is not the environment that you would want to introduce a new brand in. 

“To me personally, it was really important that we are running towards something.”

I think sometimes you just have to keep pushing forward. There’s a lot of different aspects and attributes of these brands. There’s obviously all these good and bad attributes that people ascribe to social media overall, and Facebook in particular. And these are conversations that we sort of had inside the company I think going back to, like 2014, ever since Instagram and WhatsApp joined and we became a family of apps. There was a little bit of an inherent awkwardness to having the company named after one of them. I never really considered it when I thought the primary thing that we were doing was social media, because Facebook was and still is the iconic social media brand. So it always felt a little odd to me to have a brand that was supposed to stand for social media and take Facebook out of that slot and put something else in. That felt a little odd. I wasn’t sure what job that would be doing. 

But now I think the next chapter of what we’re doing is coming more into focus. And I know that a lot of people are gonna have questions like the one that you asked. To what extent are we running towards something versus running away from it? And I guess all I can say is that, to me personally, it was really important that we are running towards something. And that this is a vision for the future that we’re really excited about and that we’re committed to and we’re really going for. I wouldn’t have wanted to do this if that wasn’t in my heart how I felt about what we were doing. 

I know that people will kind of ascribe a lot of different reasons, and obviously there’s different pros and cons of doing different things. But that was a basic litmus test for me. I wasn’t gonna let us do this if I didn’t feel really strongly about the thing that we were anchoring our brand on and how we were going to move forward.

Do you think it helps with internal morale and recruiting as well, if you’re looking ahead and you’re trying to reposition how the company is thought of in the valley and where you’re hiring from?

I think that’s an interesting question. My guess is it will help with some people, but it might also be different for some people. So I’m not sure. We’ve had this conversation for several months now since I’ve signaled that I wanted us to become a metaverse company and be seen in this way. And I’d say, overall, the sentiment is definitely positive internally about it. I think more people are very excited about it.

“We continue to focus on being the best at building social media apps.”

But I think it’s also really important to our team, and frankly it’s important to me, too, that we continue to focus on being the best at building social media apps. A lot of people come to Facebook today because that’s what they want to go do. And I think it’s really important to people that we are paying attention to that going forward. Billions of people use our products and we need to make sure we keep doing that well. But I do think it should be exciting to people. I think, in general, the best people want to work as part of big missions. I certainly think that the metaverse as the next chapter of the internet is going to be really exciting to a lot of the right people. I think we’re clearly positioned as a company that has the most ambitious vision and the deepest commitment and investment in this area.

Is part of this at all about setting up a way for you to change your role at the company in the coming years? Do you still see yourself as CEO and chairman in, say, five years?

I think probably. I don’t have a specific date how long I want to be doing this for. I guess what I could say is I’m very excited about the next chapter of what we’re doing. So I really want to go do that. So yeah, I don’t have anything more to add on that. I wouldn’t look at this as part of a plan to move in that direction.

Because you know you’re gonna get the Alphabet comparisons.

Yeah, I think it’s a fair question. I guess what I can say is that really isn’t what we’re doing here. I think this is more about just signaling our commitment to this vision and focusing on it, setting up a new brand architecture for the company so that way all people who use our products can have a relationship with the company that is separate from their relationship with the apps. I’m very excited about what we’re building. And I’m pretty young. I have a lot of energy. But certainly at some point I’m not [going to be] running the company. That’s not really what this is about, though.

It sounds like you’re implying that there’s going to be a new unified account system across everything?

You’ll have a Facebook account and you’ll have an Instagram account. You’ll also have an account with the company that’s the top level. So that way if you don’t want to use Facebook, you don’t have to. One interesting analogy here is I think we’re basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first. I feel like this is in a way like when Microsoft went from being Windows first to cloud first.

There were all these subtle ways in which, because the company brand was Facebook, a lot of stuff flowed through Facebook and the Facebook app in ways that may have not been optimal. Facebook is still clearly the app that people use the most out of all the ones that we do. But there are people who want to just use WhatsApp or want to just use Instagram, or just want to have Quest and be in VR or AR and not have to use these things.

So I think it’s about being able to pick and choose which of the services you want to use and know that, no matter what happens to your Facebook account or your Instagram account, you’re still going to have all the content that you bought in VR or all your virtual goods. You can set up an avatar and it can be tied to one of those accounts or could just be tied to your overall identity across the different family of apps. And you can use it in all these places if you want. I bet that’s going to be pretty powerful.

Is the whole metaverse push also tied at all to the work on young adults and teens ? Kids love Roblox. They love Fortnite . Is that a part of it, too?

It’s not the primary part of it. I do think it’s important to clarify that when I’m talking about what our north star demographic here is, we’re talking about young adults 18 to 29, not primarily teens and certainly not primarily kids. But like college and post college, that’s sort of historically been the strong base for us. And generally it continues to be a strong base. But I think it’s really important that as so many more people use all our products, that we don’t lose sight of that.

“I don’t think [metaverse is] really going to be huge until the second half of this decade at earliest.”

The median age of the people who use our products gets older. As we try to make our services better for everyone, I just want to make sure that the quality doesn’t drift for young adults. What I’ve basically told every team is whenever you’re building anything now, whether you’re working on feed ranking or you’re building groups or you’re designing Reels or video or Marketplace, keep in mind especially what’s going to be important to young adults. Let’s say you’re building Marketplace. What young adults need to buy and sell is probably different from what people who are later in their life need to buy and sell. So there are just all these different ways that I think the products will shift to going in that direction. 

And that certainly goes for everything that we’re going to be doing around the metaverse, too. That’ll be the north star demographic, the hero demographic, that we keep in mind. But a lot of what we’re talking about is probably nearer term than metaverse will be. I think the work we’re doing on the metaverse will be very exciting over the next few years, but I think so much fundamental stuff has to get done that I don’t think it’s really going to be huge until the second half of this decade at earliest.

We face a lot of competition from TikTok and iMessage especially now, as well as a bunch of others that have been around forever — YouTube, Snapchat. But TikTok and iMessage are growing incredibly quickly. So I think in terms of our focus on the apps, and Facebook and Instagram in particular, that I think is going to be a bigger thing over the next one to three years. Whereas the metaverse work I think will be a little further out in terms of actually reaching a ton of people.

The term metaverse. I’m thinking about it originating from Snow Crash and that dystopia that it originates from and the context of that term, does that concern you at all? It’s kind of funny that it originates from people trying to flee the real world into a virtual one because the real one is crumbling. Is that something you thought about at all when you were thinking about leaning into the word?

Yeah, I think that’s certainly a con of it. But I think it means more than that. Obviously, the book has this whole environment around it that’s sort of negative. But I don’t think it has to be that way. I also think that as these technologies develop, they take on different connotations and metaphors. I would be very surprised if five years from now the main association that almost anyone had with the metaverse was about the initial mention of it in Snow Crash . What it’s going to mean to people is going to be all the use cases that they have in there and what they’re able to do with it.

I’d actually be interested to look at what the earliest mentions of the internet were. People called it the information superhighway and stuff. None of that was was super negative, but it was pretty odd when compared to how we think about it today. I think that these things are always more dynamic. I didn’t want to be deterred from using what seemed like the clearest and most logical term that matched what we were building because of some negative connotations that some people have. It’ll take on more meaning than that.

A part of Connect that interested me was you talking about crypto and new forms of governance in the metaverse. Are you working on supporting NFTs ? It seemed to me like you were thinking about DAOs. I’d be curious to know what you think of that and smart contracts in general?

I don’t have anything to announce on that right now. But here’s what I’d say. The projects that we’ve done around Novi, I do think we’ve been the most forward leaning of the big tech companies around this space. So clearly we’re interested in it and generally supportive of the space and think that there’s an important role for it to play in the future.

One of the big questions that people are going to have about virtual goods in the metaverse is, “Do I really get to own this thing? Or is it just content that someone can basically just take away from me in the future?” And I’m pretty sensitive to that, given all the pressures that we’ve had to try to navigate around censorship and what’s the definition of something that’s harmful versus when you have to get in the way of people being able to express something. All that becomes a lot more sensitive when there’s money and ownership, people pay for something. They just really want to know that their thing isn’t going to be taken away.

“I do think that there’s an important place for more decentralization”

I do think that there’s a pretty important role, whether it’s the current way that people are thinking about NFTs or just ways to do decentralized entitlements across the metaverse. I don’t think that there’s going to be only one system. But I do think that there’s an important place for more decentralization across that. As more of our projects become more mature, then we’ll have more to talk about in that space.

I’m wondering if you think that Facebook has faced so much scrutiny because of how it controls the flow of speech and because there’s just natural tension there, and people don’t like that sometimes. Or because of how top-down it is, where people have little say in how it runs or an ability to make money on the platform? I think a lot of the media scrutiny operates with the assumption that you’re not stopping enough of the bad. Or that, on the more extreme end, any bad means the platform is net negative.

I do think, in general, the last five years have been a big learning period for me and the company. There were a lot of issues that we’ve just had to build much more sophisticated programs around, whether that’s around building AI systems to identify proactively all these different kinds of harmful content and act on them, building a much stronger privacy program, a lot more with encryption, all of these different things. 

A lot of these are things that we cared about much earlier in the company and had some programs around, but we really kicked a lot of them into high gear after 2016. I think some of that was spurred by some of the scrutiny and then just us being introspective and saying, “Hey, I do think we should build stronger programs here.” Now, in general, I’m very proud of what we built there. I think it’s difficult problems and you’re balancing complex social equities between things like free expression and trying to address harmful content. It’s impossible to ever do both perfectly. And I think that the ideal answer probably isn’t to just lean in one direction fully or the other. It’s to try to balance it. So then you end up not making anyone particularly happy. But I am genuinely proud of the work that we’re doing there. It’s an industry-leading effort. I think anyone who’s serious acknowledges that. The investments and results far exceed the sophistication of anyone else. 

But still, when you’re talking about building a new ecosystem, I just think it would undoubtedly be better to build these things in from the beginning this time. We’re pretty serious about that. So the question of what are the principles. Privacy is a really important one. And so is it safety, especially if you’re in such an immersive environment. You want to be able to say, “Hey, this person is bothering me. I need to get out of here quickly, or I want them to disappear to me.” So there are all these different dynamics that we basically want to embed in the foundation of it. Interoperability is another. It’s been disappointing, the level of interoperability today on the mobile internet. So hopefully we can do better in the next one.

I don’t know. One thing that I’ve talked about over the years is building these platforms around people instead of apps. I do think there’s something to this where, if the atomic unit of this system is it’s like an embodied internet and you’re in it and the atomic unit is you have your avatar and your digital goods. And the different apps aren’t completely different things. They’re just different spaces that you can teleport to.

I think that’s an architecture that should be fundamentally more amenable to interoperability, as long as you build the right standards in from the beginning, than one where the atomic unit like our mobile platforms today is apps. And the assumption is that every app is a completely different environment and you start from nothing in each one. So I do think that there’s something about how you design these things and make it more people-centric that either leans more or less towards that. So we’ll see. But I think it’s going to be good to try to build some of these things in from the front.

Apple opens the App Store to retro game emulators

The playstation vita still rules, best buy geek squad employees report mass layoffs, iphone emulators are allowed now so here are some great ios controllers, elon musk says tesla will reveal its robotaxi on august 8th.

More from this stream Facebook Connect: all the news about ‘Meta’ and Mark Zuckerberg’s VR dream

Amid the fluff, meta showed an impressive demo of its codec avatars, with facebook’s change to meta, what’s the new big tech acronym, facebook’s oculus quest will soon be called the meta quest, facebook’s famous thumbs-up hq sign has been replaced with meta.

Bringing the individual back in: Private entrepreneurs as actors in international relations – the case of Mark Zuckerberg

Review of Economics and Political Science

ISSN : 2631-3561

Article publication date: 6 September 2019

Issue publication date: 19 September 2019

This paper aims to study individuals in international relations especially private individuals in global politics. Therefore the paper focuses on analyzing the case of Mark Zuckerberg the founder and chief executive of Facebook who affects the international arena. The paper illustrates Zuckerberg’s strategies to assert wide influence and power within Facebook’s network and through multiple networks.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper follows new theories of studying the human agent in international relations, concentrating on private individuals as new actors in international relations (IR). Thus, depending on “network making power theory” and the “three-dimensional power perspectives; (discursive, structural and instrumental)”, the paper illustrates the case of Mark Zuckerberg as a private entrepreneur and his authority in the era of social media dominance with a focus on: Zuckerberg's discursive/ideational power strategy. Zuckerberg’s strategy to work as a switcher through multiple networks. The most obvious one is the Facebook network, through which he can assert global influence.

Formal state officials are not the only type of individuals who can affect international relations. Technological evolution has empowered private individuals as influential actors in international relations (IR). Interdisciplinary approaches became essential tools in studying new actors affecting IR. There are new patterns of power linked to individuals without formal positions. Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook and global philanthropist, is considered an influential actor in IR depending on programming and switching strategies to assert his power in a networked world.

Originality/value

This paper is able to prove that there are new forms of power which belong to private individuals in a networked world.

• Bottom-up approach
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Network programmer
• Networks switcher

Abdelhaey, S.A. (2019), "Bringing the individual back in: Private entrepreneurs as actors in international relations – the case of Mark Zuckerberg", Review of Economics and Political Science , Vol. 4 No. 4, pp. 304-320. https://doi.org/10.1108/REPS-04-2019-0048

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Samah Abdelsabour Abdelhaey.

Published in Review of Economics and Political Science . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

The realist paradigm in international relations focused on the study of nation-states as the main actors in IR. Initially, the state behavior emanating from a sovereign entity was given priority in understanding international relations. The state level of analysis was the dominant paradigm for a long time. This traditional vision was limited and incomprehensible as it neglected a large part of the crucial interactions in the international arena.

The study of non-state actors in international relations began as one of the most important manifestations of globalization. Nye (1990 , p.157) mentioned that the idea of power diffusion in international relations resulted from newly sprouting issues that changed the influence of the nation state. This has increased the activities of transnational actors.

Initially, the influence of individuals in international relations has emerged in the form of the leadership paradigm as official governmental leaders in the international system. This is through decision-making processes concerned with the nation state's foreign policy. Non-traditional patterns of non-state actors in international relations have emerged as a result of increasing communication between people. The spread of information and communication technology enabled the existence of individuals as actors in IR.

Private entrepreneurs are private individuals who established transnational networks across their nation states in different domains: technological, economic and cultural. Some of them are called social entrepreneurs. They seek to tackle global problems to refine societies in the direction of global change via networking power.

Accordingly, the study seeks to analyze the role of individuals as actors in the international arena, and mainly the transnational effects of private entrepreneurs. It delves deep into the case of Mark Zuckerberg – CEO of Facebook and the founder of the “Chan-Zuckerberg initiative” for philanthropy work. It shows various strategies and tools of power.

Consequently, this paper answers the main research question: how individuals with informal authority have crucial influence on global affairs in a networked world. It manifests the case study of Mark Zuckerberg and his influence.

The first part studies the theoretical framework that deal with individuals in international relations theory. It begins with analyzing the individual, as presented in formal state officials and ruling elites. Afterwards, it investigates new models of individuals affecting the international arena without having any formal authority, whether they are collective or individual.

The second part is concerned with private entrepreneurs in international relations and their authority, examining the case of Mark Zuckerberg, and his private authority as a global actor in a networked world.

The individual as a level of analysis in international relations

The levels of analysis in international relations have emerged in the studies of Waltz, Kaplan and David Singer. Waltz, in his book, “Man, The State and War ”, cited in Schneider (1960) defined three levels of analysis for understanding the international phenomenon. They are the individual level of analysis, the state level of analysis and the international system level. This division of levels of analysis shows that it is a geographical division. At a macro level, it is represented in the international system. At a micro level, it is represented at the level of nation state and the level of individual ( Chatterji, 2013 , p. 34).

Scholars of IR have ignored the study of individuals’ influence on the international scene and turned to study other analytical tools. However, some trends have started to re-focus on the individual level of analysis. As a result, questions concerning the influence of individuals in international relations have been raised. For example, “What is the behavior of states affected by individuals?”, and “Under what circumstances do individuals become more influential?” Indeed, Individuals do not only affect the behavior of their states, but also the behavior of other states, especially when there is a concentration of power which allows leaders to have the upper hand in times of crisis and major changes ( Byman and Pollack, 2001 , p. 109).

After the cold war and the failure of traditional international relations perspectives to predict its end, international relations theorists recognized the need to focus on the human side to make war and peace decisions in politics. Those human choices have become a crucial element in the understanding of events elaborated in the post-cold-war era. All international transformations assert that human will and human perception are important forming and interpreting international affairs ( Hudson and Vore, 1995 , p. 210).

The phenomenon of individuals as actors in the international arena is initially associated with the model of political leadership. The decision-making process in the nation state represents the perception, the mind and the will of those individuals. Accordingly, many theories have evolved like great man theory, personality theory and attitudes theory ( Fox, 1959 ). All these theories deal with the role of leadership at both the domestic and international levels.

The analysis of international relations must focus on people-centered analysis, and the decision makers on national and international levels. This is due to the fact that individuals are the ones who feel threatened or safe. They are the ones who perceive, who are misunderstood, who cooperate or refuse to cooperate, and who determine the needs and interests. Welfare and dignity issues are related to the human element and not to institutional symbols ( Kelman, 1970 ).

Thus, the individual level of analysis helps us to understand the role of the human being in the decision-making process, and how the leader’s personality influences the foreign policy decisions depending on their beliefs and experiences. It should be noted that the evolution of international relations does not arise from international institutions, but it arises from changes in people's minds, attitudes, and priorities. Those changes determine the patterns of change in institutions and decisions ( Kelman, 1970 , p. 3).

Consequently, the individual level of analysis was limited to individuals with official positions and authorities in the state based on their ability to formally make political decisions, and thus, they have a direct impact on the international arena.

Therefore, individuals' roles increased in the international arena, and theoretical trends explored the role of individuals who have no official positions in international relations. This resulted from globalization and the increasing communication between people, regardless of time and space constraints.

Bottom-up approach in international relations

The geographical divisions of the three levels of analysis in international relations resulted in a strict definition of state sovereignty. However, according to the great reformation of globalization, the meaning of definite state borders and state sovereignty were redefined. The globalization new trends have contributed to understanding the bottom-up approach in international relations studies regarding individuals' roles. Accordingly, non-official citizens and individuals new interactions created a “citizen-driven approach”. It contributed massively to the understanding of international relations ( Crooks et al. , 2014 , p. 206).

Due to the impact of individuals’ roles in the international relations, scholars introduced the concept of “politics for human beings”. It redefined politics as a social act to provide humanitarian needs and social realities. Individual needs are prerequisites for human existence as these needs are the motives of human beings across different cultures. If politics are contemplated this way, individuals’ needs will become a starting point for both domestic and international policies. Therefore, some scholars argued that it is theoretically wrong to deal with individuals according to the constraints of the nation state or the international system, which can ignore the importance of the human element. Even when attention is paid to individuals, it is only related to formal decision-makers as nation states representatives ( Isaac, 1974 , p. 264)

Therefore, individuals have become an area of interest in international relations. Many questions have been raised about the non-official individuals. This is due to the existence of formal authority which was the criteria of judging the influence and legitimacy of individuals' role in international affairs.

Global developments have enabled individuals to influence international relations. Thus, the skills of individuals developed resulting in a “skill revolution” at mass levels, which made citizens press their leaders effectively. These developments have empowered the individual to be an important agent in international relations. Citizens are traditionally defined by their affiliation to the nation state. In the context of the globalization era, the ability of the nation state to shape the identities of individuals has been reduced; individuals are considered to be less nationalist and more cosmopolitan. Accordingly, there have been large movements of individuals in the context of “civic responsibility”. As a result, the concept of citizenship has been broadened to include the voluntary affiliation to any internal or external activity to satisfy human needs ( Rosenau, 1997 , pp. 235-277). Consequently, more and more highly functional societies have governed global politics.

There are “collective action” movements of individuals represented in the forms of social movements, activist networks and global public opinion. Bayat, in his book, “Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East” referred to the movements of individuals and how ordinary people have become increasingly influential regardless of formal or institutional frameworks. He refers to “non-movements” as the collective actions of millions outside the institutional frameworks in public squares, streets, homes and communities which he calls the “Art of Existence”. These movements consist of workers, women, youth and students. This contributed to the change of the Middle East since the Iranian revolution ( Bayat, 2013 ).

Increasing opportunities, mobility, advanced technology and high levels of education, together with increasing opportunities for training and experiences at the local and international level have enabled more networked international relations. The concept of contentious politics has evolved; it is broader than the study of social movements as it seeks to study the protest movements, strike waves and transnational activist movements. Hence, it is related more to the informal institutional and non-institutional interactions that bind the local and the global together. In the context of globalization, the movement of individuals and groups in different communities and states has increased. Cosmopolitans identified as the groups and individuals who employ local and international opportunities and resources to achieve common goals with international allies ( Tarrow, 2005 , pp. 24-29).

Consequently, the methodology of bottom up approach based on the individual level of analysis has become an important interpretative approach in international relations studies. The role of individuals in global politics has developed to be more populist, grass-rooted, and not yet a traditional elitist one. Thus, there are individuals at the leadership and elite level, as well as empowered individuals at the informal levels.

The power of networking/communicating and individuals’ empowerment in IR

The increasing popularity of the internet and communication tools has empowered new actors. Information technology has led to structural changes in societies and at the international level, because it empowers certain social groups more than others, as it redistributes power, values, beliefs and the principles of societies ( Bae, 2003 , p. 83). Therefore, new patterns of non-state actors have emerged in the international arena, such as activists who advocate women rights, environmental issues and human rights.

Humanity has become a common framework for social sciences giving recognition to the individual’s rights in dealing with state authority. This is shown in several areas, particularly in the areas of human rights and in the field of environmentalism. The common property of humanity has been confirmed. Thereupon, the role of individuals as actors in the international relations has been elaborated. The idea of a global citizen, especially in the Cosmopolitan school has evolved to set individuals as the basic unit of analysis. They gained universal rights, regardless of states and borders through the international humanitarian community and surpassing the narrow national boundaries ( Cabrera, 2008 , p. 87).

New actors have gained the potential to challenge the state authority and have influence globally. Non-state actors have entered the sphere of international scene as individuals, groups and civil society organizations. These entities tend to have horizontal networking rather than traditional vertical and hierarchical forms of authority. Studying global civil society and human rights in institutions and networks has created transnational interactions by individuals outside the government positions ( Ruggie, 2004 ).

The monopoly of power at the national level has been reduced to give a chance for new forms of power at the sub-national level and at the transnational level. The civil society became a part of individuals' negotiations and debates realizing that the individuals' community is more important than the community of nations, and that the humanitarian tie is strengthened through political groups rather than states. The perspective of the global community or world society has emerged to consider individuals as non-state actors ( Buzzan, 2004 , pp. 8-9).

The world has become more networked and the individuals have become aware of networking power. Official or unofficial actors cannot influence the international arena without building communication links with other networks sharing the same values and interests. The goal of networking is to build power capable of influencing an area of interest. The ability of individuals and groups as non-state actors penetrating the state power spatial control has grown, because networking depends on transnational links. Hence, networking creates a state of collective power for individuals to act as transnational actors ( Hanafy, 2015 , p. 4).

Traditional visions of power studies focus on the possession of both material and moral sources and assume a structural form of power, regardless of context, issues, topics and areas of influence. The network analysis focuses on the dynamic dimension which coincides with the complexity of the international phenomena, so it allows the study of different levels of analysis. Thus, power in a networked society lies in the bonds and relationships that bind one another together. The actor's influence depends on his influence in the network which is indicated by his relationship with other actors in the network and outside ( Khafaga, 2015 , p. 7).

Through networking and communications, individuals can impart information to create awareness of new global issues and exert pressures and influence in international domains. The impact of these networking strategies lies in the ability of creating attention, changing agendas, influencing institutional processes and changing the policies of the target, which advocate accountability policies ( Keck and Sikkink, 1999 , p. 29).

The social power of networks arises from the ability to create meaning in the minds of individuals through communication processes. The individuals have interest in building networks and communication links. Thus, they create a network impact, through which individuals seek to achieve their goals and activities in the international arena ( Kahler, 2009 , p. 26).

A “programmer”: the one who is able to program a network, develop its objectives and reprogram it to deal with surrounding environment. This process differs from one network to another.

A “switcher”: who is responsible for networking within the network and in relationships with other networks to enhance the network’s power, ( Castell, 2011 , pp. 776-77) especially networking between media, political, cultural and economic networks.

Networking power and communication strategies lead to increasing individuals’ roles in international relations, whether they are collectively or individually. Hence, new patterns of individuals as actors in the international arena have evolved. When it comes to political actions of individuals in the international arena in a globalized world, we can mention leaders as formal state representatives, citizens and entrepreneurs with their own private agendas ( Partzsch, 2011 , p. 6).

Private individuals in international relations

Influential private individuals in IR have emerged with different spheres of influence and tools of power in the political sphere. A new type in the list of non-state actors is represented in individuals outside the governmental positions who possess the skills and resources to have an international impact. They have financial, economic or informational capacity to influence transnational events within their own states and in the regional or international sphere.

Influential private individuals and ideas inventors have emerged either by relying on wealth or fame. There are models of businessmen, owners of technology and communication networks, owners of media companies, armed groups leaders, international mafia leaders, private entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, and internet hackers. All these individuals have their impact on a global level away from the formal state authority. Some of them may clash with nation state officials and others may enter a complementary relationship with state officials.

Some of the world's rich people are working to solve global problems with social projects in international relations. Their presence is linked to the emergence of private authority in global governance. These individuals work in the areas of poverty, environment, and education. They have become internationally influential creating social and political changes ( Partzsch and Fuchs, 2012 ).

George Soros , who is a global businessman and the owner of the Open Society Foundation that works worldwide in nearly 60 countries around the world. It represents a transnational network operating mainly in central and eastern European countries and the former Soviet Union. He adopts a wide range of initiatives to advocate human rights, education, independent media, and public health ( Stone, 2010 , pp. 267-268).

Bill Gates , who is the owner of the Microsoft Corporation. It is an international company operating in 102 countries. His fortune is estimated around 79.2 billion. Bill Gates plays a major role in charitable works worldwide through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It supports programs in Islamic countries amounting to $7bn, and its institutions work in education and health to eliminate diseases. The Bill Gates institutions have disbursed nearly $472m in higher education since 2006 ( Strauss, 2013 ).

Fethullah Gulen , considered internationally as one of the most influential Islamic reformers, advocates for education, consolidation of peace and civilizational dialogue. Many individuals have been affected by his speeches and efforts in the educational field in both Turkey and abroad. His efforts have already contributed to peace-building in many areas of conflict, including the Balkans, Iraq, Northern Ireland and the Philippines ( Mohaned, 2007 ).

Private individuals are capable of making a significant impact due to several reasons. First, those individuals are less bound by the rules of the political game, unlike individuals in official positions, who are restricted by such rules. Second, they are less accountable to the public; they are working far away from the bureaucracy, which makes their movements easier than the movements of many leaders in governmental positions. Third, they possess vast resources and are connected to transnational networks that enable them to successfully champion the values they believe in.

The technological revolution and the advent of cyberspace have helped technology entrepreneurs’ role at international levels. They can have local and international influence regarding their states, and they have a clear role in lobbying governments for internet policies. They have a large amount of resources and powerful tools. Therefore, they can have direct confrontations with nation states authorities.

Scholars often focus on structures and not human agents in the study of network power, but some scholars focus on the role of the human agent through “the concept of the protocol”. The protocol, here, is defined as the scientific and technological rules and standards governing relationships within the network. It is considered as an explanation of how human control exists. Consequently, they can have the power to connect or disconnect in the networks. This is what can be called “network sovereignty”, as these networks operate based on the data transmitter settings and rules ( Stumpel, 2010 , pp. 9-13).

Network making power strategy is a crucial tool of power which means the ability to control a network. This control appeared in two strategies, the first one is to constitute a certain network and to have the ability to program and reprogram network goals and mechanism. The second one is to have the ability to work as a switcher to connect with other networks to set common goals ( Arsenault and Castell, 2008 , p. 489). Therefore, the crucial elements of power in the network society are the ability to set the rules, program a network and switch between different networks.

Arsenault and Castell (2008) tested this hypothesis through the case of Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp as a media giant. They discovered that Murdoch's strategies and business model penetrate new markets and leverage public and political elites’ opinions to achieve more targets by controlling multiple connecting points through switching actions. Thus, they assumed that the switcher power is crucial in a networked world.

Depending on the network making power strategies, Moran (2018) investigated the case of Mark Zuckerberg's network switching power. She assumed that Zuckerberg, as a media mogul, gains power through interconnections across multiple networks. Moran added two updates to the results achieved by Arsenault and Castells. First, she highlighted that the power of the switch is a double edged sword as it creates opportunities, and weakens the power of seekers. The second result of Moran’s study is that technological media networks, especially social media ones differ from others. Therefore, to asset power, requires “mega-switchers.

From a different theoretical framework, Partzsch and Fuchs (2012) investigated the cases of Bill Gates and Michael Otto’s power model, as individual entrepreneurs and transnational philanthropists, who influence globally through their financial contributions. The power model of those individuals has three dimensions. The first is the instrumental dimension, which means the ability of those individuals to influence political decision makers through pressure, alliance, or cooperation through lobbying activities. The second is the material structural dimension, which means the ability of individuals to constitute private institutions and global networks that have the ability to enforce rules and standards. The third is the discursive/ideational dimension, which focuses on the strength of values and beliefs adopted by these individuals, and embraced by the institutions that have chosen to exert political pressure. They achieve values globally and locally in context through speeches seeking global change. It means that those private actors do not pursue interests, but they create them. Hence, this framework highlights the discursive and ideational power besides the instrumental and material power of private individuals in international relations.

This paper seeks to examine the case of Zuckerberg by bringing together network making power theory and the three-dimensional power perspectives. Network making power theory helps in understanding the structural and instrumental power dimensions of private individuals. Thus, Castell (2011 , p. 776) mentioned that the programmer role is decisive. Once the network is programmed, it can work efficiently to achieve its goals.

Hence, depending on the network making power strategies of programming and switching, the main power strategies clarifies well Zuckerberg’s case. Programmers control network goals and rules, as well as contact points. Network programmers have the ability to determine the content of what the public can see and the search engines results. They are also capable of producing, distributing and controlling the content. Thus, this power can be used for political, commercial or personal purposes ( Moore, 2016 , p. 29).

Castell (2011 , pp. 781-82) mentioned that:

Network-making power is the capacity to set up and program a network and that the owners and controller of media networks are the ones who have the financial, legal, institutional, and technological means to organize and operate mass communication networks to accomplish the goals they assign to the network.

Accordingly, Mark Zuckerberg can reprogram Facebook goals and resources to assert his authority vertically within Facebook’s network. Besides this, he can be networks switcher by asserting his authority horizontally as a switcher between the Facebook network and other technological and non-technological networks. Consequently, Mark Zuckerberg’s power and authority model is programming and reprogramming the ethics and objectives of the Facebook network and developing relationships across different networks as well.

Although Moran (2018) applied network making power strategies to illustrate Zuckerberg’s case as an influential actor, she does not pay attention to the discursive and ideational power dimension. It is a crucial tool of analysis as social networks are governed and ruled by their programmers’ speeches that determine what can be done and what cannot. These speeches do affect people by shaping their minds.

Castell (2016 , pp. 12-13) mentioned that the ability to program a certain network depends mainly on enhancing effective discourse and persuasion methods in favor of the programmer's goals and plans. Therefore, this paper aims to add the discursive and ideational power of Zuckerberg’s case, as it illustrates his strategy as a programmer of Facebook’s network and other technological and philanthropist networks. It is reflected in his discourse which shapes values and identities across multiple networks. This frames Zuckerberg’s public image as a global actor.

Accordingly, this paper discusses strategies of Mark Zuckerberg to assert power and authority represented in three main mechanisms. The first one is the ability to program the Facebook network goals and vision through his declared speeches aiming at building a global community of people. It can have a transnational effect depending on Zuckerberg’s vision and tools represented by the discursive power of Zuckerberg. The second one is to assert his vertical authority within the hierarchal and financial administration of Facebook depending on the founder-led culture that represents his structural power. The third one is to assert horizontal authority by connecting Facebook with other technological and non-technological networks through which he can gain more power and authority. Hence, he supports his instrumental power by lobbying decision makers depending on the power of the switcher.

Mark Zuckerberge's discursive/ideational power strategy

Mark Zuckerberg was Time's 2010 “Person of the Year”. The reason behind this was that Zuckerberg was able to connect more than half a billion people and was able to redraw their social relations creating a new system for exchanging information. Zuckerberg could change the way we live. It is also reported that Zuckerberg is able to connect 12 per cent of humanity in one network together, so that he is able to create a social entity nearly twice the size of the United States. If Facebook was a country, it would be the third largest country, just after China and India ( Grossman, 2010 ).

The discursive approach of power is considered one of the most important of Zuckerberg's strategies to gain and assert power. Thus, Zuckerberg adopts a discursive strategy worthy of mention and analysis, as he offers important political, cultural, and social insights. Scholars considered it as an appropriate approach for better understanding of Facebook network strategy and policy towards its users and its surrounding environment. Thus, understanding Zuckerberg’s own language is performative and functional, as it is framing debates surrounding social networking ( Zimmer and Hoffmann, 2014 ). Studying Zuckerberg’s discourse sparks questions and concerns about common online social life complexities as Zuckerberg has power and influence in a wide range of public talks and conversations. This shapes social networking platforms main issues like privacy, online identity and people to people online relations rules.

“A useful directory for quickly finding information about people.”

“A social network connecting and enabling the sharing of information between people.”

“A critical social infrastructure for the Web and the world.”

At the beginning- as the founder and the CEO of Facebook- Zuckerberg declared that Facebook was originally built to “make the world more open and connected” and that Facebook was created to give people the ability to participate. Zuckerberg believes that Facebook is a not-for-profit company as it aims to achieve an important social mission. This mission is accomplished through “giving more people a voice”. According to Zuckerberg’s vision, Facebook aims to:

Strengthen people to people relations : Zuckerberg believes that personal relationships are the basic unit of society, so Facebook builds the tools that facilitate more connections. He declared that, “ We have already helped more than 800 million people map out more than 100 billion connections so far, and our goal is to help this rewiring accelerate.”

Improving people’s connections to products, businesses and economy : in an open and connected world, it is easy to communicate with high quality products: therefore, Zuckerberg has mentioned that, “More than four million businesses have Pages on Facebook that they use to have a dialogue with their customers. We expect this trend to grow as well.”

Changing people's relations with their governments : communication increases accountability and transparency, and leads to more empowerment of people and greater solutions to problems. Thus, governments will respond to the demands directly formulated by people and there is no need for political mediators. ( The Telegraph, 2012 ).

Mark assumes that there is great need and opportunity for everyone in the world to get in touch and connect. Zuckerberg gives global community and global citizenship priorities on his agenda, as he referred to in his speech at Harvard University on May 25, 2017:

What defines us […] It is not nationality, religion or ethnicity, but the fact that we are global citizens […] Progress now requires convergence, not just as nations, but as a global community. This is the struggle of our time. ( The Harvard Gazette, 2017 ).

Mark Zuckerberg has defined the characteristics of the desired global community as the goal of the Facebook entity. Zuckerberg gave a detailed speech in February 2017, on his personal Facebook page entitled “Building the global community”. He assumes that our world is facing global problems; therefore, humanity must unite, not only as states, but also as a global community. He said:

The most important thing we can do in Facebook is to develop social infrastructure to give people the ability to build a global community that works for all of us.

Supportive community : Mark Zuckerberg’s speech shows that the Facebook community includes a variety and layers of relations. It begins with personal relationships, and then institutional relationships. Zuckerberg believes in the importance of online communities to enhance physical communities. Consequently, Zuckerberg argued that “ there is a real opportunity to connect more groups that will be meaningful to social infrastructure in our lives” . As a result, Zuckerberg believes in “ a healthy society that needs these communities to support our personal, emotional and spiritual needs”.

Safe community : Zuckerberg mentioned that Facebook helps individuals to be safe by enhancing a community that “ prevents harm, helps during crises and rebuilds afterwards in a world where anyone across the world can affect us ”. According to Zuckerberg, Facebook gives “ a real opportunity to build global safety infrastructure ”, where Facebook, as noted by Zuckerberg, can help prevent damage, help during crisis, or to rebuild after the crisis. There is a safety check feature to verify “friends who might be affected by an attack or a natural disaster” . Zuckerberg said that The ‘Safety Check’ feature has been activated 500 times in two years. Zuckerberg announced also that during an earthquake in Nepal, Facebook community collected 15 million dollars to help people recover and rebuild, which according to Mark is the largest collective relief effort in history.

An informed community : Zuckerberg believes that Facebook is a historical and civilized force, as it can enable everyone to have a voice. It supports what he called public discourse, which advocates the possibility of creating the greatest positive impact on the world by building a common understanding worldwide.

A civically engaged community : Zuckerberg believes that collective values are reflected in societies through participation in the civil process. Therefore, he believes that there are two distinct types of social infrastructure that must be built. The first is the infrastructure that encourages participation in existing political processes, such as voting, and expressing opinion. This happens through the great interactions provided by the Facebook community ensuring that the political process reflects societal values. The second one is to establish a new process for citizens around the world to participate in collective decision-making. As our world is more connected than ever, and individuals face global problems that stretch across national borders, Zuckerberg sees that Facebook, as the world's largest community, can provide a great opportunity globally to encourage civic engagement. Zuckerberg gave an example of the 2016 US presidential election where Facebook helped more than two million people to register and vote. Zuckerberg sees this as one of the largest voting turnout efforts in history, and is greater than the combined efforts of the two major parties in the USA.

An inclusive community : that reflects common human values from local to global levels. Zuckerberg believes that building an inclusive global community requires the establishment of a new process for citizens around the world to participate in community governance. Therefore, Zuckerberg declared that Facebook is not just a technological or media entity, it is a community of people. This means that we need community standards that reflect our collective values for what should or should not be allowed. ( Zuckerberg, 2012 ) Therefore, Zuckerberg represents a crucial node in the Facebook network through his position. He is able to create his own vision for transnational networked community through Facebook. He assumes that Facebook network can strengthen a connected global community of people both online and offline.

Zuckerberg’s description of Facebook relations with its user is unstable, changeable and contradicted somehow. There are sometimes democratic relations calling for democratic negotiations and civic participations. Those relations are top-down at other times.

Although Zuckerberg refers to Facebook as a global community of people that enhanced global citizens’ approach, Zuckerberg’s top-down approach of governance enhances nationhood pattern.

In spite of calling for democratic and civic participation through the Facebook community, Zuckerberg considers himself and the Facebook executive body as social leaders, innovators, and architects through codifying and reinforcing his values and beliefs system. He formed the Facebook platform architecture with himself occupying the prominent figurehead position.

Accordingly, Zuckerberg's rhetorical strategy plays a major role in expanding his power and authority through his ability to define concepts, draw relationships and set governing rules within the Facebook network and its relationship with users and the surrounding environment.

Asserting vertical authority within the Facebook network

The Facebook Company had revenues of $41bn in 2017 and more than 2 billion users per month. The first IPO in 2012 was the largest ever subscription to a technology network at the time. The majority of Zuckerberg's wealth is derived from a 13 per cent stake on Facebook ( Bloomberg Billionaires Index, 2019 ).

The power to command attention : Technology giants have a significant impact on the social and political context as they have the ability to form the virtual domain. This means increasing their ability to attract public attention to shape priorities by controlling access to technology networks’ content and services, especially in democratic societies. They have become alternative channels of information and they have a great role in protecting the security of citizens globally. Therefore, technology entrepreneurs might act as gatekeepers, but they are non-neutral ones.

The power to communicate news and information : Technology giants have the power of inclusion and exclusion through their worldwide networks. In 2015, about nine news organizations have been allowed to broadcast on Facebook. Consequently, the Facebook administration has the right to choose the quality of the news and the content allowed to be broadcasted; additionally, their search engines have the ability to exclude certain results. Mark Zuckerberg declared that Facebook aims to build the perfect personalized newspaper for every person in the world.

The power to enable collective actions : Technology giants have the ability to gather people for certain collective actions through empowering them to achieve rapid political and social changes. At the same time, those entrepreneurs can use their exclusion power to put obstacles in the way of certain collective actions, as they have the ability to control their networks’ access. Consequently, they have the power to give people a voice and to influence peoples’ voting.

The power to call to account : Mark Zuckerberg believes that enabling people to participate and giving them voice via Facebook leads to a real transparent dialogue discussing governments' credibility. This results in extensive accountability policies and tools worldwide. Consequently, through the Facebook community, people are empowered to cast the first stone at public authorities.

In the cases of social media networks, their founders play the most crucial role and completely control their networks as Freedman (2015 , p. 4) mentioned that,

In the cases of social media proprietorship may be seen as a means of maintaining a focus on innovation and retaining the ‘vision’ of the founder in order to extract maximum profits in a growing industry.

Accordingly, Mark Zuckerberg’s position as the founder and chief executive officer of Facebook enables him to play a major role in the network society. He is the most important node in the network; he can connect vertically and horizontally with other relevant actors and networks.

On the financial side : Zuckerberg has restructured the Facebook institution according to “Action plans 2016” that targeted creating “class C shares”. It represents a “non- voting share class”, so Zuckerberg can control the decision-making process and can even sell off large amounts of his stock in Facebook.

On the technological side : Zuckerberg has expanded his effect technologically in two ways; one of them is to get new technological tools to expand Facebook’s reachable zone by buying augmented reality (AR) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) technologies. The second one is to enhance Facebook’s terms of profile by buying “WhatsApp”, which is the famous mobile messaging service.

On the administrational side : Moran has assumed that Facebook is a worldwide network with geographical divisions and hierarchical division. It is represented by board of directors and function-based teams to give the impression of decentralization, but in fact it is more like a top-down decision-making power.

Consequently, Zuckerberg has asserted his authority within Facebook by programming and reprogramming Facebook goals and tools according to global developments. Additionally, he controls its hierarchical, technological and financial sides. Zuckerberg asserts his rule to set power through vertical control over the Facebook network, which enhances his material structural power dimension.

Switching power: asserting horizontal authority across multiple networks

The success of Facebook and its spread make it a crucial node in global technology networks. It means that Mark Zuckerberg has broad authority to contribute widely in programming the objectives, tools, and values that govern the wider technology networks. Hence, Zuckerberg is pursuing a horizontal expansion through the acquisition of technology competitors. Thus, besides getting WhatsApp services, Zuckerberg, in 2010, got key patents and intellectual property from Friendster, Instagram photo sharing application, “Beluga”, a group messaging tool, and “Karma”, a social gifting platform. ( Moran, 2018 , p. 7).

Mark Zuckerberg has announced in December 2015 that he would plan to donate about 99 per cent of his shares for charity works; thus, he launched in cooperation with his wife Priscilla Chan “Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative”, which announced on its official website that “Our mission is to find new ways to leverage technology, community-driven solutions, and collaboration to accelerate progress in Science, Education, and within our Justice and Opportunity work” ( Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, 2019 ).

Zuckerberg became an important actor in philanthropy. In 2016, his foundation donated about $3bn in charitable grants to fund medical projects to cure disease. Besides that, he donated $600m over 10 years to create a new medical research institution in the San Francisco area. This charitable work also supports a range of reform projects in immigration and criminal justice areas ( Benner, 2016 ). Zuckerberg’s philanthropy network enables him to lobby law-makers and to engage in political networks to advocate his political agenda. Zuckerberg’s efforts in charitable works give him a lot of advantages as he has complete control over his organizations. Moreover, he gained a greater ability to switch between political and economic networks with less restrictions and transparency requirements ( Reiser, 2017 , p. 926).

Data are big power source referred to as “data power”, and is a new way of figuring out how the public thinks, and what it is saying. It is used by companies and governments through data collection and mining. Therefore, Facebook is not just a tool of communication in the case of revolutions and political changes ( Kennedy and Moss, 2015 ). Zuckerberg is involved in the international political scene, as an important actor, who can influence public opinion and shape the political trends. He has available information and data which can shape public opinion.

Facebook tracks the political interactions of its users in the run-up to elections. It can have a profound effect on the election results. As an obvious example, “Cambridge –Analytica” showed the Facebook data scandal in early 2018. It revealed that the British company was charged for analyzing Facebook users’ personal data without the users’ permission for political reasons and to interfere in the US presidential election in 2016. It worked in favor of President Donald Trump’s campaign and in the referendum of Brexit. Mark Zuckerberg has declared in Congress that it was his responsibility, stating that:

I started Facebook, I run it, and I'm responsible for what happens there. It's not enough to just connect people, we've got to make sure those connections are positive. It's not enough to just give people a voice; we've got to make sure people aren't using it to harm others or to spread misinformation ( Spross, 2018 ).

Zuckerberg is a crucial switcher between many networks. His increasing contributions in terms of material and ideational influence have been widely recognized. Working as a switcher across multiple networks has given Zuckerberg instrumental power to influence decision-makers via lobbying. In Zuckerberg’s lobbying activities in 2013, he led a campaign with other leaders in the technology and business communities to command attention against immigration law in the US. As a result, FWD.us, as a political organization, was established. It announced on its website that, “Our goal is to influence policymakers and those around them to make the policy changes that create opportunity and unlock America’s potential”. ( FWD.us, 2019 ). Hence, he has become a significant global player; as he can tackle global concern issues and can lobby for a certain interest.

This paper is mainly interested in investigating the human agent effect in international relations, which corresponds to the extreme interest in the nation state as the unitary actor in IR. Thus, dealing with human will and beliefs demands a broader lens than the systematic theory of IR. It advocates interdisciplinary approaches in international relations, which appeared as an explanatory need to study new actors in the international arena.

As a result of the communication revolution, private individuals and mainly private entrepreneurs with transnational activities become skilled role-takers in international arena. They are able to conduct a large part of international affairs. Private individuals' influence in global affairs is related to their private authority. They have the power to influence decision-makers and masses. Through vast resources and transnational activities, individual entrepreneurs have become the new actors having a global impact in the international arena.

Investigating the human agent role in network societies depends on the ability of programming tools and strategies. Additionally, it can switch between many networks to assert power and influence. Hence, Mark Zuckerberg’s authority has extended across many networks. The most obvious one is the Facebook network, through which he can assert global influence. He can set standards and rules that can be adopted by relevant actors in other social networks. Mark Zuckerberg’s impact in a globalized and networked world is a simple fact. His power strategies depend on material, as well as ideational tools; he mixes discursive power strategy with structural and instrumental power tools.

Accordingly, this paper has argued that material and ideational power are relevant to network making power theory. The discursive power approach is an essential dimension in enhancing strategies and techniques of power within the network society and beyond. Thus, the ability of being a programmer of a certain network, or a switcher through many networks depends on a coherent performative and functional discursive strategy, which is relevant to structural and material power dimensions.

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What Leaked Internal Documents Reveal About The Damage Facebook Has Caused

Terry Gross

WSJ reporter Jeff Horwitz says Facebook executives often choose to boost engagement at the expense of tackling misinformation and mental health problems, which are rampant on their platforms.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Internal Facebook documents were leaked by a whistleblower and acquired by my guest Jeff Horwitz, a technology reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He's the lead reporter for The Journal's new series of articles called "The Facebook Files." This series details how Facebook executives are aware of the ways the platform causes harm, but executives often lack the will or the ability to address them. The series reveals how a separate set of rules has been applied to VIP users like celebrities and politicians, allowing them to at least briefly escape restrictions and penalties that are applied to other users.

Facebook's own researchers are aware that Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, has negative effects on the self-image and mental health of many teenage girls. Internal documents also reveal that Facebook researchers have warned the company's executives that the platform is used in developing countries for human trafficking, drug-dealing and to promote ethnic violence.

The company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has made it a goal to promote the COVID-19 vaccine, but his researchers have pointed out that that effort is being undermined by commenters spreading misinformation. At least some of the leaked internal documents have been turned over by the whistleblower to the Securities and Exchange Commission and to Congress.

Jeff Horwitz, welcome to FRESH AIR. Congratulations on the series, which isn't over yet (laughter). You're still - there's more to come. So what are these internal documents that were leaked?

JEFF HORWITZ: So this is a collection of internal research notes, executive presentations, in some cases company audits of its own practices that provide a pretty clear sense of how Facebook sees itself and the company's awareness of its own problems. And I think that's something that sort of separates it from a lot of other really good reporting on the company, which is that instead of this being outside voices asking questions about whether or not Facebook is being detrimental to the world, this is Facebook asking those questions and answering them and sometimes finding that the answer is very much yes.

GROSS: And what you're talking about is researchers from Facebook who report to executives and tell them what's going on. And often what they've told them is that this platform is backfiring. It's causing harm for these and these reasons.

HORWITZ: Yeah, exactly. I think it's important to draw a distinction between sort of irate watercooler chat and people letting off steam about things that don't really involve them at the company versus this stuff, which is these are the people that Facebook has hired to inform it of reality and to help it address problems. And in many cases, they are finding some really unpleasant things and then running into obstacles in trying to fix them.

GROSS: Now, are the obstacles a lack of will? Or are the obstacles that Facebook is so big and there are so many users that it is hard to control, even if you want to?

HORWITZ: I think that the premise that the company is just too big to be - to regulate itself isn't correct. There are - yes, having nearly 3 billion users is quite a lot of users to have to be in charge of. But what our reporting seems to indicate is that the company's complexity has become a big problem, as well as just kind of a lack of will and lack of interest in some instances. So it's not that a platform couldn't be made to work for this many users in a sort of simpler and safer way. It's that you can't have all the bells and whistles, and you can't maximize engagement in the way that Facebook would like to and not have that come at a cost.

GROSS: Let's look at the first program you reported on, which is a VIP program called XCheck. This is a program that basically created separate rules for VIPs and for everybody else who uses Facebook. What VIPs have been exempt from certain rules? What kinds of people?

HORWITZ: Oh, a lot of them. So Facebook has talked in the past about providing some - a little bit of extra leeway for politicians and fact-checking and misinformation - right? - the idea being that, you know, in an election, candidates should have the right to say whatever they want to say even if those things aren't strictly true. And the thing we found is that the protections Facebook offers to powerful users go far, far beyond that.

So they include celebrities. They include journalists. I have no doubt that you should qualify. I most certainly should qualify. They include athletes and just sort of people who are famous for being famous, influencers. They include animal influencers. So you know, just, like, literally, the account Doug the Pug is actually covered by XCheck, which was the program.

So basically, the idea is - the commonality among all these people and entities and animals is that they are big enough and prominent enough, they could cause problems for the platform. The way that this program was designed very explicitly internally was to avoid, quote-unquote, "PR fires." And I think that's something that kind of sticks out in general in this reporting, is that the thing that makes Facebook scared more so than harm that it might be causing is the risk of public embarrassment.

GROSS: What kind of public embarrassment? What kind of PR fire?

HORWITZ: So this can be everything from making a mistake and tangling with, you know, the singer Rihanna's account because she posted a risque French magazine cover to, you know, making an error on something Donald Trump said to, you know, anything that basically would result in the company receiving widespread public criticism. And I think this is something that is kind of - exists throughout the series, is that Facebook really likes to stay in the background. They really would like to be kind of viewed as this neutral platform in which just kind of life plays out online. And as you know, what our reporting tends to show is that that is not the case. The company is actively making a lot of choices, is determining which interests benefit and at what expense. And I think XCheck is kind of a perfect example of that, which is that the whole idea is to never publicly tangle with anyone who is influential enough to do you harm.

GROSS: Can you give us an example of a post that caused harm or could potentially cause harm that was allowed to stay up for a long time or a brief time because this person was a VIP?

HORWITZ: Sure. And there are - so there are a lot of them. Facebook's own analysis of XCheck found that 16.4 billion views of violating content occurred solely because of the lag time in taking down stuff from VIPs that shouldn't have been up in the first place. But I think the example I would give for how this program can cause harm and does sort of run against Facebook's sort of basic ethos of fairness is the Brazilian soccer player Neymar, who, in 2019, was accused by a Brazilian woman of rape. And he, to defend himself, took to Instagram and took to Facebook in a live video. And he showed pictures of this - of his WhatsApp chats with this woman, his messages with this woman. And those messages included not just her name, but also nude photos of her that she had shared with him.

And this is just a complete no-go on Facebook. You are not allowed to broadcast people's naked pictures without their consent. It is called nonconsensual nude imagery at Facebook. It's called revenge porn everywhere else. And the appropriate response, per Facebook's own rules, is to immediately take down the post and delete the account that posted it. So that was kind of what would have happened. A Facebook employee did catch this, you know, pretty early on and tried to delete it. But the problem was Neymar's account was cross-checked. So it didn't come down. In fact, it stayed up for 36 hours, during which it racked up 56 million views. And this resulted in extensive harassment of the woman who had accused him of sexual assault. There were thousands and thousands of impersonators of her. And the video was reposted just all over the Internet. And basically, Facebook acknowledged internally that it had just completely failed to protect this woman. And this happened because of XCheck.

Now, I think another part of the program that is important is that it really does and is intentionally designed to allow executives, communications and sort of public affairs people to weigh in on punishments that would otherwise be doled out. And that's what happened in this instance is that Neymar, who is one of the top 20 accounts on Instagram - like, this is a guy who is probably more famous for social media than he is for soccer. Facebook just simply wasn't willing to lose him. And so this got bumped all the way up to senior leadership of the company. And they determined that rather removing him from the platform, even though that was the absolute standard rule for this situation, they were going to kind of let it slide. So they took down the post in the end. But they didn't punish his account in the way they normally would. And I think it's kind of representative of the dual-class - or even more than dual-class system that Facebook created, in some ways, reinforcing power structures that, you know, the company has said it was supposed to kind of overthrow.

GROSS: There was a 2019 internal review of the XCheck program. What did that review say?

HORWITZ: I think people inside Facebook did have, on a long-term basis, a sense that exempting users from enforcement and from punishment on the platform was just, like, clearly not the right thing to do. This is not what Facebook was set to do. This isn't democratic. It isn't fair. And in 2019, an internal review of the XCheck program found a few things. The first one is that it was completely widespread, that there were dozens and dozens of teams that were enrolling users in various protections and that, in fact, pretty much any employee had been allowed to enter people into the XCheck program in the first place.

The second thing is that it was just deeply mismanaged and unorganized. And no one really even knew how these lists were getting pulled together. They weren't being reviewed by lawyers. There was just sort of, kind of this ad hoc process where people would just put in names. And the final thing is that they found that this was just completely indefensible. This was a breach of trust with users. It was putting users in risk of harm. And it was clearly unfair. And as they noted, this was publicly indefensible and simply something that, you know, was completely at odds with the company's own sense of its legitimacy as an overseer of its own platform.

GROSS: What was Facebook executives' reactions after getting this report?

HORWITZ: Facebook - I mean, no one disputed that XCheck was a mess and that the program was unseemly and was in, you know, direct conflict with what the company had said publicly its rules are. That said, they really weren't willing to take on the mess of just simply doing away with it, particularly with the 2020 election coming up. I think this is something that - you know, over the period of time that the documents we reviewed cover, this company was paranoid about the possibility that it might be blamed for something in relation to the 2020 election. And so they desperately wanted to keep a low profile. And there was no way that they were going to rein the program in because this was kind of one of their main methods of trying to avoid criticism from high-profile people.

GROSS: Let's talk about anti-vax posts on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has made it a priority to promote vaccines and facts about vaccines. But at the same time, Facebook has been used widely to convey anti-vax falsehoods. And you found that internal documents reveal that the anti-vax comments were mostly coming not from the original post, but from commenters. Would you describe what happened with that?

HORWITZ: Sure. And I think a important place to start here is what you said about Mark Zuckerberg and his goals. This is something - fighting COVID was something that Facebook was, perhaps, uniquely inclined and positioned to do. They early on recognized the threat of the public health crisis back when a lot of other people were poo-pooing the possibility of the global pandemic. They sent all their moderators home, content moderators home, with pay. You know, they sort of really reframed and sort of sprinted to provide new tools, to provide information, to, you know, help out with public health efforts. They really were focused on this. And this was something that came from Mark Zuckerberg personally. I mean, this was kind of going to be Facebook's moment.

And I think the interesting thing about this is that there were, you know, sort of all these resources and good intentions put into it, and yet also this kind of failure by the company to recognize the risks that its own platform could pose. And it's not as if Facebook hadn't had plenty of warnings that the anti-vaccine movement was very active on its platform. If you remember the, you know, measles outbreaks back in 2019 at Disneyland and things like that, there was a very, very aggressive community of anti-vaccine activists that have been active on the platform, had gotten really sophisticated in terms of their methods and their approach. And so the company sort of focused on the positive and all the things it could do that would be helpful and really didn't pay much attention to the, I think, fairly obvious threat that a small band of people who were extremely dedicated could pose if they correctly harnessed Facebook's tools, which they did.

GROSS: Well, let's take a short break here. And then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jeff Horwitz, who is the lead reporter for The Wall Street Journal's new and ongoing series of articles called "The Facebook Files." We'll be right back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF OF MONTREAL SONG, "GRONLANDIC EDIT")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Jeff Horwitz, who is the lead reporter on a new and ongoing Wall Street Journal series called "The Facebook Files," based on a series of leaked documents from Facebook. These documents detail how Facebook executives are aware of the ways the platform causes harm, but executives often lack the will or the ability to address them. Is it harder to oversee or to apply rules to commenters than it is with people doing the original posts on Facebook?

HORWITZ: This was a bit of a blind spot for the company. They hadn't really ever put that much resources into trying to understand comments, which is kind of funny because Facebook really did engineer its platform to produce a ton of comments. And they - what they realized early in 2021 was that, you know, as the vaccine was rolling out - was that all of the authoritative sources of information about it - right? - the World Health Organization, UNICEF and so on - all of their posts were just getting swamped by anti-vaccine advocates who were, you know, producing, at extremely high volume, content in the form of comments that was kind of just hitchhiking around.

And I think the company understood this, to its credit, at that point as being a real threat because, you know, it's one thing to see something authoritative from UNICEF, and it's another thing to see that same thing and then a whole bunch of people saying don't believe it, right? And that's kind of the style of comment that was rising to the top of Facebook's own systems. So they realized that basically all of the things they were doing to try to promote authoritative information were in some ways being harnessed by the people who were trying to promote the exact opposite.

GROSS: Internal documents also show that Facebook knew - that it was really a small group responsible for most of the COVID misinformation on Facebook. So what was Facebook's response to this research that was delivered to executives?

HORWITZ: Yeah. So the initial response was just basically horror because they realized that, you know, there were just a very high proportion, not only of comments but also posts in general, that seemed to be - vaccine-hesitant was the company's phrase - so not necessarily straight misinformation - you know, false things like saying vaccines cause autism or make you sterile - but people who simply were exercising their right to speak on the platform as often as possible and in just extremely coordinated, almost cut-and-paste-style ways. And they were creating, basically, a false sense that there was a large public debate about the safety of vaccines, when there really isn't.

So the initial response was just, uh-oh, this is a huge problem. We've got to fix it. And then the second response was, OK, how do we do that because they didn't really have the tools in place. They hadn't planned for this. And so they had to kind of make do with a whole bunch of kind of ad hoc interventions and try to sort of start getting public discourse to be at least somewhat representative - right? - so that any time someone who was, you know, encouraging about vaccinations wouldn't just get dogpiled by a - you know, a very, very dedicated group of anti-vaccine advocates.

GROSS: Were these changes effective in stopping misinformation about the vaccine?

HORWITZ: I think it's kind of too soon to tell how well they did. Certainly in terms of preventing this stuff from getting traction in the first place, they failed - right? - means that there were, you know - the whole problem and the thing that kicked this - kicked Facebook's response into gear was that public debate on the platform about this thing was skewed. It was getting sort of manipulated by anti-vaccine advocates. And, I mean, the fact that this was happening in 2021, as the vaccine was getting rolled out, you know, from, you know, the initial sort of first responders and medical officials to the broader population, certainly seems like it could have had an impact.

And I think, you know, the company would note that it's not the only source of vaccine misinformation in the world by any means, right? There's plenty of stuff on cable TV that would have you believe bad things about the efficacy, safety and utility of the vaccine. But certainly, it's a remarkable thing for a company that really saw itself as being, you know, in the vanguard of solving a public health crisis that, you know, they're basically having to go back and fight with this highly active, somewhat ridiculous community that is just spamming their platform with bad information.

GROSS: Let's take another break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jeff Horwitz, a technology reporter for The Wall Street Journal who's the lead reporter for The Journal's new series of articles called "The Facebook Files," based on internal Facebook documents that were leaked to The Journal. We'll be back after we take a short break.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLIE HUNTER AND LEON PARKER'S "THE LAST TIME")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Jeff Horwitz, a technology reporter for The Wall Street Journal who's the lead reporter for the Journal's new series of articles called "The Facebook Files," which detail how Facebook executives are aware of the ways the platform causes harm but executives often lack the will or the ability to address them. The series is based on internal Facebook documents that were leaked by a whistleblower to Jeff Horwitz.

Let's talk about Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. Internal research from Facebook shows that Instagram could have a very damaging impact on teenage girls' self-image, their anxiety, depression. Why does Instagram sometimes have that effect on teenage girls? - 'cause you write that the algorithms on Instagram create a perfect storm for many teenage girls.

HORWITZ: Yeah. So body image issues and social comparison obviously didn't originate with the internet. That said, Facebook's own research found that Instagram had some uniquely harmful features in terms of encouraging young women in particular to compare themselves with others and to think about the flaws of their bodies in relation to others.

And, you know, this wasn't intentional. The company certainly hadn't meant to design something that did this. But, you know, there was no question in their own findings that, you know, compared to even other social media products, Instagram was worse in this respect - that it was very focused on the body as opposed to the face or performance and that, for users who arrived at the platform in not the best mental place, it could really have a big impact on them.

GROSS: What is the way in which algorithms create a perfect storm for teenagers? - 'cause you say that in the article.

HORWITZ: Right, right. So I think there's some core product mechanics here, which is that Instagram will always show you the most popular and successful posts from your friends and the people you follow and - whereas you're comparing that to your regular posts and your regular life. So there's kind of this kind of highlight reel ethos to it that tends to lead users to think that everyone else is living their best life while, you know, they're not.

And so that's part of it. Another part of it is just simply that people tend to be attracted to content that sort of really resonates with them. And if you have body image issues already, Instagram - and you are engaged with sort of looking at people who are prettier than you are on the platform, Instagram's going to keep on doing that. If you have concerns about diet and fitness and you think you might be overweight, Instagram is likely going to pick up on that and feed you a ton of dieting and fitness content.

And so they're kind of this - there's this feedback loop that the platform can create. And it turns out for people who are in a vulnerable place in the first place, it can be really damaging and, in some ways, lead to almost addictive-type behavior per Instagram's own analysis.

GROSS: So what you've just described is reported in documents that were written by Facebook researchers and then delivered to Facebook executives. So executives knew what you just told us, right?

HORWITZ: Absolutely. And Adam Mosseri, who's the head of Instagram, in fact, commissioned a lot of this research in the first place. So, you know, I think there's some credit that should go to the company for determining that - given the extensive external criticism of the company on these fronts, that perhaps it should at least get to the bottom of them. And it did. I mean, I think there's no question that what it found, you know, was convincing. As the company's own presentation - one of the presentations to executives notes, we make body image issues worse in 1 in 3 teen girls.

GROSS: But you write that this represents one of the clearest gaps revealed in these internal documents, gaps between Facebook's understanding of itself and its public position.

HORWITZ: Yeah. Look; I can understand why someone in corporate communications isn't eager to make the sentence, we make body image issues worse in 1 in 3 teen girls, public, much less some of the other things in these findings which included that young women who had thought about self-harm or suicide in the last month - that a not-tiny fraction of them traced those feelings directly back to Instagram's platform. So think potentially life-threatening effects.

And I can understand why the company wouldn't want to acknowledge that publicly, you know, or wouldn't want to talk about it much. I think what's interesting is the company did talk about these issues. They just didn't say that. What they said is that there were perhaps small effects, that the research was inconclusive, that, you know, there wasn't any, you know - that, you know, if there was an issue, it was bidirectional, so it was good for some users and bad for some users - basically really downplayed the clarity that they had internally about what was going on and the effect of their product.

GROSS: What was Facebook's reaction to your article about teenagers and Instagram?

HORWITZ: They defended the research and keeping the research private as necessary for, you know, honest internal discussion. And they, I think, tried to argue a bit with whether or not the conclusions of causality that seem to be very present within their own - how their own researchers discussed this stuff even with management - they sort of tried to undermine, you know, the certainty that it really sort of feels like pervades the presentations that the company's researchers gave to executives.

But, you know, I don't think they disagree with the issues. They sort of defended the things that they have said previously about there being relatively small effects. And, you know, I've noted that for many users and users who are in sort of a healthy emotional place, Instagram is a lot more beneficial than it is harmful, all of which is true. None of that is wrong. It's just that the question is, at what cost to vulnerable users?

GROSS: Well, let's take another short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jeff Horwitz, who is the lead reporter for The Wall Street Journal's new series of articles called "The Facebook Files." We'll be right back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SOLANGE SONG, "WEARY")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Jeff Horwitz, a technology reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He's the lead reporter for The Journal's new series of articles called "The Facebook Files," which detail how Facebook executives are aware of the ways the platform causes harm, but executives often lack the will or the ability to address them. The series is based on internal Facebook documents that were leaked by a whistleblower to Jeff Horwitz.

One of the articles in the series is headlined "Facebook Tried To Make Its Platform A Healthier Place. It Got Angrier Instead." And this article is about a change that was made in 2018 that rewarded outrage. What was the change?

HORWITZ: Facebook promoted something in 2018 called meaningful social interaction. And the idea was that passively scrolling through content wasn't good for people - you know, it just turned them into zombies - and that what Facebook should be doing is encouraging people to sort of connect and engage with each other and with Facebook content more often. And there were two parts to this. One part was promoting content from people's friends and families, which was kind of a throwback to kind of an earlier era of Facebook where it was much more about that stuff than it was about kind of a constant stream of information and content.

The second part, though, was rewarding content that did really well on engagement, meaning things that got a lot of likes, but even more important than likes, things that got a lot of emoji responses, comments, re-shares, direct message shares and things like that - so basically things that made users kind of pound the keyboard a bit and, you know, share and engage as much as possible. And you know, nothing about that seems, you know, atrocious in sort of a general high-level view. But it turns out, as Facebook realized down the road, that the effect that had was privileging angry, incendiary conflict because there is nothing more engaging than a fight.

GROSS: And news publications, as a result, found that a lot of their traffic was decreasing dramatically. What was the connection?

HORWITZ: So there was some element of this where they were just kind of reducing news overall in feed at the - you know, in other words - and to boost the stuff from friends and family. But I think the type of content that succeeded changed. And one thing we found was that BuzzFeed's - the head of BuzzFeed, Jonah Peretti, who is - you know, no one could accuse this guy of being unsophisticated when it comes to social media - was actually figured out that something had changed materially when Facebook rolled out this stuff and that, essentially, a type of content that was succeeding was - on the platform, was, like, sensationalistic, incendiary. Gross medical stuff was doing well - you know, things that sort of got a response. And you know, his point to Facebook when he got in touch was that, look, like, you guys are forcing us to produce worse content.

And the same thing was true of political parties. They also picked up on what had changed, and they started adjusting accordingly. And so parties told Facebook that because of, literally, this algorithm change - like, some reweighting, some math - that they were shifting not just their communication strategy for the internet but, in some instances, their actual platform.

GROSS: Once this was reported to Facebook executives, what actions did the executives take?

HORWITZ: Facebook's attraction to meaningful social interaction as a metric wasn't just that they thought it would be good for people. It's also - they thought it would be good for Facebook. They really needed people to be engaging with content more because they'd been in decline in commenting and interaction in a way that was threatening to the future of a social network dependent on user-generated content. And so this had been really successful in terms of getting engagement back up and getting people to comment more. And the problem was that doing the things that researchers said would be necessary to sort of correct the amplified anger issue was going to come at the expense of some of the growth metrics that Facebook was pursuing. And that's always a hard sell inside that company.

GROSS: What was Facebook's response to this article?

HORWITZ: So Facebook noted that they had made some changes, which is true. I think the thing that we were very focused on is that people up to and including Mark Zuckerberg kind of resisted anything that was going to cause sacrifices in user growth numbers and in user engagement numbers for the purpose of improving the quality of discourse on the platform. So they told us on this one that basically any engagement-based ranking system or any ranking system is going to have problems - right? - that yes, they acknowledged that incendiary content did benefit from what they'd done, but, you know, that's not to say that there aren't disadvantages to other systems as well.

GROSS: So one of your articles in The Journal reports that in developing countries, Facebook was often used by drug cartels, human traffickers, used to promote violence against ethnic groups. And developing countries are actually very important to Facebook now. And why is that?

HORWITZ: People in poorer countries - they don't provide Facebook much money, but they do provide it with a lot of growth. The Facebook has basically stalled out in developed economies. I mean, there isn't really many - there isn't much in the way of new user growth to be achieved in the U.S., Canada, Europe and wealthier nations. So this is kind of where pretty much all of the company's growth has been coming in recent years. And you know, that makes them kind of - places like India are sort of the company's future.

And at the same time, though, Facebook has never really invested much in safety in those environments. And you know, they had, for example, a team of just a few people trying to focus on human trafficking across the globe. That includes sex trafficking, labor trafficking, organ trafficking. And they were clearly overwhelmed. And there were some, I think, serious issues of the company just simply not really caring all that much.

I think one instance we found was that the company had identified sort of wide-scale human trafficking occurring, in which people from the Philippines and Africa were kind of indenturing themselves into domestic labor in the Gulf states. And they were - once there, kind of lost all autonomy. They could literally be resold without their permission. And Facebook actually had - first of all, had allowed this for a long time. Like, up until 2019, it was actually OK for people to be sold on Facebook so long as the selling was happening through brick-and-mortar establishments, as long as, you know, there was - it was in a country where this was allowed. And then I think more broadly, Facebook had just kind of turned a blind eye to this whole practice. One thing, you know, that I think was - really stood out to me just in terms of demonstrating the company's lack of will on some of these things is that Facebook, while it had identified widespread human trafficking, hadn't done anything about it - and in some instances for years.

The thing that Facebook - moved Facebook in 2019 to take aggressive action on this was Apple. You know, maker of my iPhone told Facebook that it was going to take away - it was going to remove Instagram and Facebook from its App Store, basically make it so that people couldn't download the apps unless Facebook got its human trafficking problem under control. And boom, that was it, right? Actually, understanding human trafficking was happening on its platform wasn't enough to get Facebook's attention - what did was the threat that Apple might take an action that would severely damage its business. So Facebook, literally within days, was just pulling down content all over the place. And the crisis passed. And then, as we found, things went back to normal. And normal means that human trafficking is happening on a pretty widespread scale on the platform.

GROSS: Another obstacle that you report is Facebook doesn't have enough people monitoring posts who speak the dialect needed to identify dangerous or criminal uses of Facebook.

HORWITZ: Yeah. And this is something that I think - look; like, I think we're all familiar with Facebook's apologies right now, right? Like every couple of months or weeks or days, depending on how closely you're monitoring it, the company ends up saying that it's sorry that something happened. And particularly overseas, it seems like there's just this kind of succession of inadvertent oversights that come with large human consequences. And the thing we found is that these aren't accidents. These aren't due to the company, you know, just simply having too much to possibly do. These are issues of direct neglect. So for example, with Arabic, it's the third - world's third most commonly spoken language. It has many dialects that are mutually incomprehensible. Facebook literally can't - doesn't have anyone who can speak most of them or can understand most of them in terms of sort of the vernacular. And it also doesn't have a system to route content in those dialects to the right people.

So when something happens like the Israeli-Palestinian violence earlier this year, the company is just sort of woefully unprepared to deal with it. They can't process content. They don't have people on staff. And, I mean, one of the things that's kind of tragic that we could see inside the documents was that you had all of these people who work for Facebook with Middle Eastern backgrounds who were just desperately trying to, like, kick in ad hoc to try to, like, help steer the company in a better direction because it was just screwing up so much at a time that was, like, so crucial on its platform.

GROSS: Nick Clegg, who's the Facebook vice president of global affairs, recently published a blog post saying that The Wall Street Journal articles have contained deliberate mischaracterizations of what Facebook is trying to do and conferred egregiously false motives to Facebook's leadership and employees. What's your reaction to that?

HORWITZ: My reaction is that Facebook has the right to say whatever they would like to say in response to our reporting. I think the more useful reaction to that isn't mine. It's that there actually have been in recent days a large number of former Facebook employees who have directly taken issue with what Mr. Clegg and what the company has said on these subjects. And I mean, these are people who actually were doing the work. Like, there are names that are popping up on Twitter that are the names that were sort of protagonists, I suppose, in some of the stories I could see playing out inside of the company.

And what they've said very clearly is that - you know, one, that the things that we're raising are pretty much correct and, two, that there is, in fact, this history of kind of disregarding the work of the people Facebook's asked to do integrity work - integrity just being platform safety and content quality stuff. And so, you know, I think there's something really encouraging about some of these voices coming to the fore because these are people who sort of pioneered not just the ways to measure problems on the platform, but also ways to address them. And so the idea that they might be able to come out and talk more about the work they did is, I think, really interesting to me and, in some ways, would be very healthy for the company.

GROSS: My guest is Jeff Horwitz, who is the lead reporter for The Wall Street Journal's new and ongoing series called "The Facebook Files." This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF YO LA TENGO'S "WEATHER SHY")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Jeff Horwitz, a technology reporter for The Wall Street Journal, who's the lead reporter for the Journal's new series of articles called "The Facebook Files." The series details how Facebook executives are aware of the ways the platform causes harm. But the series also says executives have often lacked the will or the ability to address those problems. The series is based on internal Facebook documents that were leaked by a whistleblower to Jeff Horwitz. What are some of the suggestions current or former Facebook employees have made, that you're aware of, of how to improve some of the problems that you've reported on?

HORWITZ: Yeah, I think Facebook tends to treat social media as if it's - you know, Facebook is the only way in which it could possibly exist - right? - kind of a love-it-or-leave-it approach. And that, for their own - per their own employees, is absolutely not true. There are a number of things that can be changed, right? So in addition to just simply the question of resources, which would address a lot of problems, there are also ways in which the platform perhaps has grown too complex to be safe. So, for example, in developing countries, is it really a good idea for things to be able to go viral in a matter of minutes? Maybe that's not good if you're worried about information quality. So virality restrictions is one thing.

There's other work that I think seems like it would be really promising, such as trying to give more prominence to voices that seem to have respectful conversations. It's the - the concept is called earned voice. And rather than just sort of rewarding the biggest loudmouth, this would reward people who tend to be able to have conversations with people who aren't necessarily exactly like them that are nonetheless respectful and, you know, mutually satisfying. Now, that's not, of course, the way you get the most engagement, but it is something that could potentially provide a different style of conversation that would be, I think, recognized by most people outside the company as healthier.

GROSS: Recently, Facebook created what's been described as a Supreme Court for Facebook, an outside entity of experts who would help Facebook make complicated decisions about content. How has that been actually functioning?

HORWITZ: So this came up in the XCheck story that we did about the sort of special protections for VIPs. Facebook spent $130 million creating the Oversight Board and - with the stated purpose of providing transparency and accountability into its operations. And one of the powers it gave the Oversight Board was the ability to ask Facebook questions that Facebook would then have to answer, assuming that they were relevant. And in the case of XCheck, the board asked the right questions. In relation to Donald Trump's suspension from the platform, the board asked, very specifically, for data about the program and for the XCheck program and about protections for VIP users. And Facebook said it didn't exist. And this is obviously awkward, given the stuff we've seen, because, you know, we can actually see there were internal dashboards of metrics as well as just voluminous documentation of the program's problems, of the number of accounts, of how many bad views of content occurred as a result of the lag in review times. You know, this is a pretty well-documented program internally, and Facebook told its supposed overseers that it just simply didn't have the information and couldn't possibly gather it.

And the Oversight Board has, at this point, issued some pretty strong statements of discontent with that situation. But I think it does seem like a bit of a crisis in the sense that, you know, oversight does imply the ability to actually see what's going on inside the company. And I think the Oversight Board has, to its credit, recognized that that isn't something that Facebook is readily willing to provide. So what their role is, I think, going forward is going to be an interesting question, because they're, - you know, they're kind of being asked to play a self-regulatory role for Facebook. At the same time, they are fully independent, and they also seem to not have much trust in Facebook and whether Facebook's going to give them the truth about what Facebook is itself doing.

GROSS: Well, Jeff Horwitz, thank you for your reporting, and thank you for coming on our show.

HORWITZ: Thank you so much, Terry.

GROSS: Jeff Horwitz is the lead reporter on The Wall Street Journal series "The Facebook Files." If you'd like to catch up on FRESH AIR interviews you missed, like this week's interviews with B.J. Novak, who played Ryan in "The Office" and has a new TV series, or Max Chafkin, author of a new book about the controversial co-founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of FRESH AIR interviews.

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GROSS: FRESH AIR'S executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Ann Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Kayla Lattimore. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Therese Madden directed today's show. I'm Terry Gross.

Copyright © 2021 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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Case Study Development for Entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook, the well-known on-line societal networking web site was begun at the college campus of Harvard University in 2004. In merely a short period of clip, it has attained huge acknowledgment among American colleges ( Keenan & A ; Shiri, 2009 ) . With its explosive acknowledgment, no 1 else has attained huge fiscal benefits than the laminitis, Mark Zuckerberg. With his entrepreneurship orientation he became billionaire at the immature age of 23. At this age, everyone in the universe can merely woolgather about holding this much wealth but Mark Zuckerberg have it in world ( Woog, 2009 ) .

Most of the people of this age are still seeking to do their ultimate way towards life whereas Mark Zuckerberg made it true. With his advanced and airy attack, he has become the universe ‘s youngest self-made billionaire with an approximated net worth of US $ 4 billion ( Mezrich, 2010 ) . The ground of his success is Facebook that had attained huge popularity all over the universe.

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Mark Zuckerberg is a 24 twelvemonth old American computing machine coder and enterpriser. He was born in White Plains, New York, and brought up in the small town of Dobbs Ferry, besides New York. In present, he is the Founder, CEO and President of Facebook that is an on-line societal networking web site ( Woog, 2009 ) . This web site is popular among 1000000s of people all over the universe. He originated Facebook phenomenon with his roomies Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz at Harvard University. These roomies are the Co-Founders of the company.

He launched Facebook from his Harvard residence hall room on February 4, 2004 with his roomies Moskovitz and Hughes. In get downing this web site was merely a ‘Harvard Thing ‘ but really shortly it attained success in about 45 schools and more and more people were utilizing it. Nowadays, Facebook has more than 175 million active users all over the universe ( Mezrich, 2010 ) . With his invention and accomplishment he has become the youngest enterpriser. His success is all due to his entrepreneurial orientation from the beginning of his life.

Entrepreneurial Orientation of Mark Zuckerberg

From his early phases in his life, he was holding ardor for innovations every bit good as love for engineering. Bing an enterpriser, he is known for his web phenomenon, Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg was raised by his parents, Edward and Karen Zuckerberg, who are both physicians ( Mezrich, 2010 ) . His success narrative can be understood with the undermentioned headers:

The Passion

During his early phases he was holding a passion for doing computing machine plans, specially communicating tools and games. He initiated programming throughout his in-between school. In his high school, when he attended Phillips Exeter Academy in high school, he built a plan for helping his pa in his office. His plan helped his pa ‘s office workers in pass oning ( Inspiring Narratives from Famous Entrepreneurs – Mark Zuckerberg, 2010 ) . Throughout this, he besides developed a music participant named Synapse that expended unreal intelligence to larn the user ‘s heeding wonts.

The thought for Facebook was originated in the head of Mark Zuckerberg in his yearss at Phillips Exeter Academy. His thought was inspired by the construct of printing an one-year pupil directory with headshot exposures of all pupils, module and staff known as the “ Facebook ” ( Kaushik, 2009 ) . At that clip, he merely planned to offer service merely to pupils within the Ivy League as these pupils were holding jobs in networking with one another. Afterwards, he made determination about distributing Facebook to other schools and universities with the aid of his roomies ( Woog, 2009 ) .

This attack of Mark Zuckerberg evidences the entrepreneurial orientation as he identified the ways to transform his thoughts into chance. He was holding thoughts related with communicating and linking people that provided an chance to Ivy League pupils in deciding their networking jobs ( Mark Zuckerberg Biography, 2010 ) . His passion to link people with advanced communicational tools assisted him in the origin of well-known societal networking web site with advanced concern and selling related characteristics ( Social Networking and the Workplace, 2009 ) .

With his airy attack and finding, he developed a societal networking site that facilitates in linking people from different corners of the universe at low cost for different intents like concern, political relations and socialization ( Kuratko, 2008 ) . This website significantly assisted enterprisers and little concerns that are looking to lucubrate their contact base ( Inspiring Narratives from Famous Entrepreneurs – Mark Zuckerberg, 2010 ) . This web site, work as a significant client relationship direction tool for present companies. The companies can easy do usage of this web site for publicizing their offerings and doing personal dealingss with clients and associates ( Mitchell, 2007 ) . In short, it can be said that this innovation of Mark Zuckerberg had significantly assisted in support in touch with any one at any corner of the universe.

He was non merely holding an thought of linking people as for doing this world he besides adopted all concern related facet that an enterpriser adopts before set uping a company. In his clip besides he adopted an across-the-board theoretical account of the entrepreneurial procedure that is influenced by personal, sociological, organisational and environmental factors ( Bygrave & A ; Zacharakis, 2007 ) . The thought of invention in his head came from his ain personal properties and every bit good as environmental properties. He was holding a passion for engineering and his inventions were besides supported by chances related with networking as most of the people were holding troubles in happening the manner to acquire connected with others ( Kuratko, 2008 ) .

In his innovation of Facebook the triping event was his hazard taking ability and growing of personal computing machine industry along with the increasing usage of cyberspace. He implemented his thoughts for deciding the problems of his schoolmates and it was successful because he was holding all qualities of an enterpriser and leader. He attained growing with the aid of advanced characteristics and tools.

Test the Market:

Before implementing his web site Facebook, he set up a short lived Facemash, a Harvard-specific exposure evaluation site that functioned like HotOrNot.com but employed exposures taken from Harvard ‘s on-line Facebook. After its success, in February, 2004, he commenced “ The Facebook ” . It included purposes of Facemash combined with the diverse facets of societal networking sites like Myspace ( Inspiring Narratives from Famous Entrepreneurs – Mark Zuckerberg, 2010 ) . In the first month of its launch more than 50 % undergraduate population of Harvard were registered with this service.

After achieving success in initial months, he planned to spread out his service that every enterpriser performs who have all accomplishments and hazard taking ability. In March 2004, he expanded Facebook to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale. This enlargement of the web site was extended as it besides unfolded to all Ivy League and Boston country schools. Subsequently, it was unfastened to most of the Canada and U.S. universities ( Mark Zuckerberg, 2010 ) .

Staying Focussed:

In add-on to, following enlargement with proving the construct, Mark Zuckerberg was besides focussed. With the enlargement and success, he moved his base of operations in Palo Alto, California in June 2004. After some clip when, Mark attained place of a national pupil web phenomenon, he dropped out of Harvard so that he can follow his dreams and run his company on a full clip footing ( Inspiring Narratives from Famous Entrepreneurs – Mark Zuckerberg, 2010 ) . Afterwards, in August 2005, the Facebook was officially recognized with the name of Facebook and the sphere facebook.com was bought for a reported $ 200,000.

This attack of the Mark Zuckerberg, demonstrates all qualities of an enterpriser. An enterpriser is person who perceives an chance and constructs an organisation to follow that chance ( Bygrave & A ; Zacharakis, 2007 ) . He followed a dream of set uping Facebook as the most popular societal networking web site that become success in the signifier of a societal public-service corporation that connect people all around the universe ( Scale, 2008 ) . He was holding a passion for linking people and set uping effectual webs that was made true in the signifier of Facebook.

Harmonizing to Bygrave & A ; Zacharakis ( 2008 ) and entrepreneurship respects all the maps, activities, and proceedings related with comprehending chances and edifice organisations to carry through them. For achieving success he undertakes:

Market and Customer Research

Service and Product Innovation

Team Building

Finding & A ; Managing Resources

All these facets were besides undertaken by Mark Zuckerberg for the creative activity of Facebook and for carry throughing his dreams. He besides tested the market with the launch of Facemash. In add-on to this, he besides served peoples with advanced invention in the signifier of a web site through which they can link with any one in any corner of the universe. The societal networking web site created by Mark offers its users with flexible information ecology every bit good a reasonably unfastened system that appropriates users to add little applications to pages. With the usage of this web site, users and members become able to get down or run their concern that demonstrates the significance of Mark invention ( Mark Zuckerberg, 2010 ) .

For huge success he besides took support of his roomies that shows his squad edifice accomplishments. He was holding all the accomplishments to happen and pull off resources that were evident in his innovation of Facebook as a good established societal public-service corporation that connect people. As good, leading accomplishments that are indispensable for an enterpriser to achieve success were besides lying with Mark ( Bygrave & A ; Zacharakis, 2007 ) . Due to his, leading accomplishments merely he is able to go the youngest billionaire. All these accomplishments and features ‘ of Mark grounds that from his early life clip he was holding an entrepreneurial orientation that assisted him in carry throughing his dreams.

In October 2008, Mark declared that it will put up its international central office in Dublin, Ireland. The huge success attained by Mark Zuckerberg was due to his committedness to his vision and concentrate on set uping a community ( Inspiring Narratives from Famous Entrepreneurs – Mark Zuckerberg, 2010 ) . He was holding most of the features ‘ that an enterpriser has like dream, decision, finding, dedication, devotedness, inside informations, destiny etc. With all these features ‘ he has become successful in his life. As good, for going successful company all the features ‘ that are required are adopted by Mark ( Griffin, 2006 ) .

Bygrave & A ; Zacharakis ( 2008 ) believes that for going a successful company 9F ‘s are required that are laminitiss, focused, fast, flexible, everlastingly innovating, level, economical, friendly and merriment. All these features ‘ are seemingly seeable in the operations of Facebook as it has laminitis, it is focused on linking people and it is fast and flexible in following advanced applications. As good, it continuously adopts alterations so that users can be offered with diverse inventions and it is level and economical. It ever tries to function its users with merriment and friendly environment that shows that Mark has established a successful company. All 9F ‘s are integrated by Mark in his company that makes it significantly successful ( Bygrave & A ; Zacharakis, 2007 ) .

Family Background & A ; Role Models

The laminitis of the planet ‘s fastest turning societal networking website “ FACEBOOK.COM ” , Mark Zuckerberg was born on 14th May 1984. He was born in a Judaic American Family and brought up in Dobbs Ferry, New York. His parents were physician. He had a good instruction as his parents were in good profession. He got married to his girlfriend Priscilla Chan. From his earlier life, he was a gifted computing machine coder and besides a heart-core Hacker.

He had his instruction from Ardsley High School that was located in New York. Afterwards, he joined Phillips Exeter Academy that is a co-educational independent get oning school for classs 9-12, situated in Exeter, New Hampshire, USA. He was given chance to work with the both Microsoft and AOL in the senior twelvemonth for choping undertaking but he refused to fall in it so that he can prosecute his calling ( Mark Zuckerberg Biography, 2010 ) . He decided to fall in the universe known Harvard University where he started working upon his dream undertaking.

For his success, he attained motive from his parents and his ain ardor for engineering. The factors that worked as function theoretical account for Mark, was engineering promotions and growing of personal computing machine industry. He was holding a high involvement in engineering that inspired him to prosecute his dreams and develop a web site that connects people all around the universe.

Previous History/Performance/Attempts

The life of Mark Zuckerberg commenced with his birth in White Plains, New York. He is a function theoretical account of most of the present childs. Most of the people view Mark as the ringleader in the constitution of the societal networking site that has become popular all over the universe ( Daft & A ; Lane, 2009 ) . In the age of 24 merely he had become billionaire and CEO of a company. If his old history is evaluated, it becomes apparent that he had shown marks of intelligence in his early yearss of life and specifically involvement in programming ( Boone & A ; Kurtz, 2009 ) .

He used to pass his trim clip in the development of different types of computing machine plans concentrating on networking and communicating channels. One of his early innovations was a music participant recognized as Synapse. This music participant included unreal intelligence package for placing the listening wonts of users ( Mark Zuckerberg Biography, 2010 ) . With his this creative activity, he was recognized by taking companies like Microsoft. The company tried to engage him every bit good as his plan but he rejected it with the purpose of fall ining internationally recognised Harvard University.

In add-on to Synapse, he besides developed a peer-to-peer client known as Wirehog. His first web undertaking was recognized as “ Coursematch, ” that facilitated users to stalk other people in their categories. Afterwards, he integrated his computing machine cognition with his newfound frat life style by set uping “ Facemash, ” a Harvard version of the “ Hot or Not ” exposure evaluation web site ( Kaushik, 2009 ) .

By fall ining Harvard, he started working on his ain undertaking and dream. At this university, he got inspiration for the creative activity of Facebook. He got inspiration for this by the pupil yearbook at Phillips Exeter Academy. Subsequently, he started working upon it in Harvard residence hall room with the aid of his roomies Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes ( Kaushik, 2009 ) . Throughout his success at Harvard, he besides confronted contention with ConnectU. Mark ‘s Harvard classmates Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, claimed that he had stolen their thought designated for their ain site, ConnectU, while engaged as a developer for ConnectU ( Kuratko, 2008 ) .

They filed a case against Facebook that was besides settled efficaciously that shows the entrepreneurial accomplishments of Mark. From his earlier yearss he showed a mark of an enterpriser as he developed different computing machine plans and applications.

Fiscal Backing

When Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook it was merely for the pupils of Harvard University. When it attained huge popularity in a short clip period, Zuckerberg involved his friends and fellow pupils Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin and Andrew McCollum to assist him in its constitution ( Today ‘s Whiz Kid Mark Zuckerberg, n.d. ) . In a short continuance, it was opened for other university pupils of Boston country. Afterwards, he besides opened rank for all American universities and high school pupils.

After some clip, Zuckerberg and Moskovitz decided to travel the operations of Facebook ‘s to Palo Alto, California. At at that place, they started an office throughout the summer of 2004. They received fiscal backup from PayPal co-founder Peter Theil. In September 2006, the site that was non recognized as Facebook was unfolded for the general populace. This site was allowed to be used by anyone who is older than 13 old ages ( Kaushik, 2009 ) . With the aid of fiscal backup, Mark Zuckerberg was able to get down his office and company.

With his across-the-board attack towards his dream, he become able in having fiscal backup that is indispensable as without this it is non possible for an person to get down a company. With the support of PayPal co-founder in present, the company has become able in affecting 200 million active users ( Daft & A ; Lane, 2009 ) . With this increasing figure of active users this societal networking web site of Mark has become 2nd most popular online societal web after MySpace.

Attitude to Risk

Mark Zuckerberg is the most well-known youngest billionaire. In his early age he has attained huge success and it is all due to his attitude towards hazard. In his life all the attempts undertaken by him were afraid of hazard. He believes that until or unless an person does non take hazard can non carry through his dreams. Similar was his ain state of affairs as from his school yearss he started developing new and advanced computing machine programmes ( Kaushik, 2009 ) . He was holding assurance that his attempts will non turn out unsuccessful. His involvement assisted him in the development of universe celebrated societal online web Facebook.

He was non afraid that what will go on if gets fails and he was holding all back up programs with him. He ever tests his plans and so launches it at smaller degree so that its effectivity can be evaluated. This attack of Mark facilitated him in going successful and carry throughing his ends ( Shelly, Vermaat & A ; Quasney, 2009 ) . Before establishing Facebook he besides tested it with the launch of Facemash that helped him in understanding the consequences that can he can achieve with the launch of this on-line societal web. He was holding a steadfast attitude towards hazard and due to this he was able to carry through his dream undertaking that was initiated in his school yearss.

Milestones/ Chronology of Significant Events

Subsequent are the Milestones of Mark Zuckerberg ‘s attempts throughout its origin of societal networking web site:

February: In February 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes founded Facebook from their Harvard residence hall room.

March: In this month, he expanded Facebook from Harvard to Stanford, Columbia and Yale.

June: In June, he moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, Calif ( Scale, 2008 ) .

December: Facebook involved about 1 million active users.

May: In this month, Mark raised $ 12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners and the company extended to confirm more than 800 college webs.

August: In August 2005, Mark officially changes its company name to Facebook from the facebook.com.

September: The Company extends to incorporate high school webs.

October: In this month, Mark added Photos as an application on its site and every bit good as it besides started to incorporate international school webs ( Mezrich, 2010 ) .

December: It involved more than 5.5 million active users.

April: The Company raises $ 25 million from Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital Partners and in this month nomadic characteristic was besides launched ( Dicker, 2010 ) .

August: Facebook development platform was launched and notes application was introduced. In this month, Facebook and Microsoft form strategic association.

September: Mark introduced News Feed and Mini-Feed with excess privateness controls and the company ‘s enrollment was expanded so anyone can fall in this on-line societal web ( Shelly, Vermaat & A ; Quasney, 2009 ) .

November: Share characteristic was added.

December: The figure of active users reached more than 12 million.

February: Virtual gift store was introduced as a characteristic.

March: The online societal web introduced by Mark reached at more than 2 million active Canadian users and 1 million active UK users.

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Case Study On Mark Zuckerberg

Case Study on Mark Zuckerberg Case Study on Mark Zuckerberg Introduction A computer engineer turned entrepreneur 'Mark Zuckerberg', is well-known for his creation of the social network 'Facebook'. Mark Zuckerberg initiated programming while still in middle school. He developed communication tools and also developed games, which he specifically enjoyed doing. To help workers in his father's office to communicate, he also programmed and developed a computer application system. He also developed Synapse, a music player, which AOL and Microsoft tried to purchase too. He had a gifted vision that helped him turn his dreams into reality. It is not quite possible to determine the level to which his conviction has led him to success, but he always knew that he would make a solid impact on society. In this case study, I will discuss how Mark Zuckerberg came to be how he is today and details of his success. Discussion Background Mark Zuckerberg got born on May 14th, 1984 in New York, USA. His father, Edward Zuckerberg, was a dentist and his mother, Karen, was a psychiatrist. His siblings included Randi, Donna and Arielle. Early Age Since early age, Mark Zuckerberg developed an interest in computers. At age 12, he created 'Zucknet', a messaging program made on Atari BASIC for his father's dental clinic. It helped the receptionist inform his father about a new patient without the need to shout. The program was also in use in the family's house for communication. He used to make computer games with his friends casually. His parents assigned a private computer tutor for him to keep up with his growing interest in computers. He afterwards went to New Hampshire to excel in literature, while still working on developing more programs. Career Story Mark Zuckerberg enrolled at Harvard University after graduating in 2002 from Exeter. He had developed a developer-like reputation by the time he was in the sophomore year. During this time, he built a program 'CourseMatch' to help students in course selection. He also made software 'Facemash', to compare pictures of two students, which eventually got removed by the University for being inappropriate. On the motivation of fellow students he subsequently started, 'Harvard Connection', a social networking and dating site. From the inspiration of his high school's student directory 'The Photo Address Book', he decided to make one for Harvard. It was to be called 'The Facebook'. On February 4, 2004, he initiated the new platform from his dorm room. The website then ...

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Mark Zuckerberg, Case Study Example

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Mark Zuckerberg demonstrates remarkable leadership techniques as portrayed in The Social Network.   What makes his leadership style remarkable is that he presented characteristics from just about all forms of leadership theories. At the age of 10, Zuckerberg taught himself C++, which is a coding language used to write software systems. This is the coding language he used to write the code for Facebook as it was demonstrated in the movie when he was constantly writing the code for the platform for his first version of Facebook. Being so self-sufficient at such a young age, Zuckerberg’s leadership traits may have initially derived from his individual characteristics. Self-efficiency is one of the six components to the trait leadership theory, along with intelligence, adjustments, extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness to new experiences. Zuckerberg appears to carry all of these components in the traits leadership theory. His intelligence is unquestionable. Creating Facebook caused for major adjustments in the social networking industry. His extraversion shows in the movie as he is reaching out to his colleagues for what he needs to expand the network. In the beginning of the movie, Zuckerberg was so stimulated by the idea of creating a new social network when the idea was given to him by the Winklevoss brothers. The movie does show a lack for Zuckerberg’s conscientious as it emphasizes that he cares more about the success of Facebook than any ethical standards. He also used his intellectual capabilities in the beginning of the movie to sexually humiliate the women in his school.

In regard to the behavioral theory of leadership, Zuckerberg demonstrates an authoritarian edge as he takes charge in what direction Facebook is going to go. He does show some democracy when consulting with Dustin, Eduardo, and Sean about what the next steps should be for Facebook, but ultimately he makes the executive decisions based on his own intuition. An example was when Eduardo wanted to fill Facebook with advertisements to generate ad-revenue. Zuckerberg did not agree with this as he did not want to drive away users with the same ad pollution found on My Space. After consulting with Sean Parker whom he looked up to, he decided to hold off on putting up ads.

From a business perspective, Zuckerberg demonstrated a great deal of functional leadership towards his generation of college students. The functional leadership theory governs that a leader’s essential responsibility lies in what the desire of his followers. In the case of creating Facebook, Zuckerberg focused on what potential users of the social network would desire. He catered to what he thought they would want to see on Facebook and how they would want it to operate. Zuckerberg monitored every environment of social networking to pick up on trends that stimulated users. The most relevant scene in the movie regarding this style of leadership was when he told Edwardo “Let’s take the entire experience of college, and put it online, it’s what people want so let’s give it to them”.

The culture of social networking had been around years before Facebook. Social networking site such as Xanga, Friendster, and My Space dominated the internet throughout the late 90’s and early 2000’s. What all of these social networks had in common was their user interface was cluttered with ads and fancy designs. In the early phases of the social networking culture, this presentation was considered acceptable among users. These sites however, featured nearly every aspect that Facebook currently has to offer. Private messaging, commenting, digital photo galleries, and a network of one could communicate with online.

As Zuckerberg mentioned in the movie, he wanted Facebook to stand out from all of the previous sites. He wanted to innovate social networking to a new level. What made Facebook different was ironically its lack of design. Zuckerberg stated in the movie “there’s no Disney Land, it’s just simple” in referencing the user interface for Facebook. As Facebook skyrocketed in popularity across universities all over the country, Zuckerberg could have easily followed Eduardo’s advice and generated thousands of dollars in ad revenue. What makes Zuckerberg a remarkable leader is again, ironically he does not care about money.

Zuckerberg’s will to serve the social networking community is what drove the culture in a new direction in the mid to late 2000’s. Suddenly, social networking became easy because of the simplicity Facebook had to offer. Then Zuckerberg started imposing new features no other social network had thought of. Zuckerberg created a “relationship status” feature as it presented in the movie where users could specify if they were in a relationship or not. Then the idea of tagging photos became a phenomenon as users no longer had to scan through pages of photos to see which ones they were in.

Because Zuckerberg ignored money at the startup of Facebook and focused his intuition on what the users would want, Facebook currently has 1.23 billion users as of January 2014. Zuckerberg waited for years to put Facebook public because he wanted his employees to focus on developments rather than profits. The most important factor about the startup of Facebook is in the movie when Zuckerberg told his team that Facebook will never be finished “the way fashion is never finished”.

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The rivalry between Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook has been going on for years. Here's what they are fighting about now.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Tim Cook have been adversaries for years.

They've traded barbs over Apple's prices and Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Recently, they've reached a new battleground: their competing AR headsets .

The long-standing feud between Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Apple's Tim Cook appears to be raging on.

The two tech titans have been feuding since at least 2014, trading barbs over each other's products and business models. Over the years, their battle has escalated to include public jabs, pointed ad campaigns, and even a legal dispute.

Here's when the rivalry began, and everything that's happened since.

The feud between Zuckerberg and Cook became public in 2014, when Cook lambasted Facebook's business model.

In September 2014, Cook gave an in-depth interview with Charlie Rose that touched on a range of topics, including privacy.

During the interview — which took place in the weeks following the infamous leaks of multiple female celebrities' nude photos stored on their iCloud accounts — Cook espoused Apple's commitment to privacy while denouncing the business models of companies like Google and Facebook.

"I think everyone has to ask, how do companies make their money? Follow the money," Cook said. "And if they're making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried. And you should really understand what's happening to that data."

Shortly after, Cook reiterated his stance in an open letter on Apple's dedicated privacy site.

"A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you're not the customer. You're the product," Cook wrote.

Cook's comments rankled Zuckerberg, who called the claims "ridiculous" and blasted Apple products as being expensive.

In an interview with Time later that year, Zuckerberg was reportedly visibly irritated by Cook's assertions.

"A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers," Zuckerberg told Time's Lev Grossman. "I think it's the most ridiculous concept. What, you think because you're paying Apple that you're somehow in alignment with them? If you were in alignment with them, then they'd make their products a lot cheaper!"

Their squabble came to a head following the Cambridge Analytica scandal when Cook criticized Facebook's actions.

In 2018, a whistleblower revealed that consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested user data without consent from 50 million users.

During an interview with Kara Swisher and Chris Hayes in the months following, Cook was asked what he would do if he was in Zuckerberg's shoes.

Cook responded: "What would I do? I wouldn't be in this situation."

Cook said that Facebook should have regulated itself when it came to user data, but that "I think we're beyond that here." He also doubled down on his stance that Facebook considers its users its product.

"The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer — if our customer was our product," Cook said. "We've elected not to do that."

Zuckerberg hit back, calling Cook's comments "extremely glib."

"You know, I find that argument, that if you're not paying that somehow we can't care about you, to be extremely glib. And not at all aligned with the truth," Zuckerberg said during an interview on The Ezra Klein Show podcast.

He refuted the idea that Facebook isn't focused on serving people and once again criticized the premium Apple places on its products.

"I think it's important that we don't all get Stockholm Syndrome and let the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you," he said. "Because that sounds ridiculous to me."

Privately, Zuckerberg was reportedly outraged by Cook's remarks — so much so that he ordered his employees to switch to Android devices.

In November 2018, The New York Times published a blockbuster report detailing the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The Times reported that Cook's comments had "infuriated" Zuckerberg, who ordered employees on his management team who used iPhones to switch to Android.

Soon after the report published, Facebook wrote a blog post refuting some of the reporting by The Times — but not the Zuckerberg-Cook feud.

"Tim Cook has consistently criticized our business model and Mark has been equally clear he disagrees. So there's been no need to employ anyone else to do this for us," Facebook wrote. "And we've long encouraged our employees and executives to use Android because it is the most popular operating system in the world."

In 2019, Zuckerberg and Cook had a meeting at the annual Sun Valley retreat in Idaho that went poorly, according to The New York Times.

According to The Times , Zuckerberg asked Cook for his advice following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Cook told Zuckerberg Facebook should delete the user data his company collects from outside of its family of apps, which "stunned" Zuckerberg and was akin to Cook saying Facebook's business was "untenable," The Times reported.

In August 2020, Zuckerberg jumped in the fray as Apple faced criticism over its App Store policies.

During a company-wide meeting, Zuckerberg openly criticized Apple, saying it has a "unique stranglehold as a gatekeeper on what gets on phones," according to a report from BuzzFeed News .

Zuckerberg also said that the App Store blocks innovation and competition and "allows Apple to charge monopoly rents," BuzzFeed reported.

Apple has been facing antitrust scrutiny from Congress and has been strongly criticized by developers — most notably "Fortnite" creator Epic Games — for the 30% fee it takes from App Store purchases. In 2020, Facebook said Apple blocked an update to Facebook's iOS app that would have informed users about the fee Apple charges.

Apple's iOS 14.5 software update angered Facebook, which says the privacy features could destroy part of its business.

That version of Apple's smartphone operating system, iOS, made it so that iPhone app developers would need permission from users to collect and track their data. While this affects any company that makes iOS apps, it also has a direct impact on Facebook's advertising business: It uses data tracking to dictate which ads are served to users.

In an August 2020 blog post , Facebook said it may be forced to shut down Audience Network for iOS, a tool that personalizes ads in third-party apps.

"This is not a change we want to make, but unfortunately, Apple's updates to iOS 14 have forced this decision," Facebook said.

The complaints from Facebook and other developers led Apple to temporarily delay the new privacy tools , saying it wanted to "give developers the time they need to make the necessary changes."

Facebook escalated the feud to a full-page ad in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal.

—Dave Stangis (@DaveStangis) December 16, 2020

In the ads, Facebook argued that the changes would hurt small businesses that advertise on Facebook's platform.

"Without personalized ads, Facebook data shows that the average small business advertiser stands to see a cut of over 60% in their sales for every dollar they spend," the ad reads, which was posted by Twitter user Dave Stangis.

Apple hit back, telling Business Insider  that it was "standing up for our users."

"Users should know when their data is being collected and shared across other apps and websites — and they should have the choice to allow that or not," an Apple spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, Facebook also said it would help Epic Games, the company behind "Fortnite," in its legal battle against Apple.

Epic Games had accused Apple of violating antitrust laws and engaging in anticompetitive behavior regarding the App Store's fees and policies.

Facebook said it planned to help Epic with discovery for the trial.

Zuckerberg also lashed out at Apple during an earnings call in 2021, saying the company frequently interferes with how Facebook's apps work.

When discussing Facebook's suite of messaging apps during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call, Zuckerberg made a clear dig at Apple , saying the iPhone maker made "misleading" privacy claims.

"Now Apple recently released  so-called nutrition labels , which focused largely on metadata that apps collect rather than the privacy and security of people's actual messages, but iMessage stores non-end-to-end encrypted backups of your messages by default unless you disable iCloud," Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg went on to describe Apple as "one of our biggest competitors" and said that because Apple is increasingly relying on services to fuel its business, it "has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do to preference their own."

"This impacts the growth of millions of businesses around the world," he added.

But Cook hasn't backed down from his view that Facebook's business model of harvesting user data and selling it to advertisers is harmful to consumers.

During a speech at the European Computers, Privacy and Data Protection Conference the same week, Cook discussed business models that prioritize user engagement and rely on user data to make money. Though he didn't mention Facebook by name, Cook made several references that alluded to the platform.

"At a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good engagement — the longer the better — and all with the goal of collecting as much data as possible," Cook said.

Facebook launched another ad campaign in 2021 aimed at proving the need for personalized advertising amid its ongoing battle with Apple.

The initiative,  titled "Good Ideas Deserve to be Found,"  makes the case that personalized ads help Facebook users discover small businesses, particularly during the pandemic.

"Every business starts with an idea, and being able to share that idea through personalized ads is a game changer for small businesses," Facebook said in a blog post announcing the theme. "Limiting the use of personalized ads would take away a vital growth engine for businesses."

Cook called Facebook's objections to the privacy update "flimsy arguments" during an interview with The New York Times.

During a podcast interview with Kara Swisher, Cook said that he believes society is in a privacy crisis and that he's been "shocked" that there's been pushback to the new feature to this degree.

"We know these things are flimsy arguments," Cook told The Times. "I think that you can do digital advertising and make money from digital advertising without tracking people when they don't know they're being tracked."

Cook also said he doesn't view Facebook as a competitor, contrary to what Zuckerberg has said.

"Oh, I think that we compete in some things," Cook said. "But no, if I may ask who our biggest competitor are, they would not be listed. We're not in the social networking business."

Apple's iOS 14.5 update finally rolled out in April 2021, and Facebook paid steeply for it.

"The impact of iOS overall as a headwind on our business in 2022 is on the order of $10 billion," then-Meta CFO David Wehner estimated in an earnings call that year .

In March 2024, Meta, Microsoft, X, and Match Group joined Epic Games in arguing that Apple has been flouting a 2021 court-ordered injunction that required the company to let developers show users links to alternative payment systems beyond the App Store.

Apple, for its part, said in January that it had "fully complied" with the injunction.

The latest battleground in Apple and Meta's feud is their work on virtual and augmented reality.

Apple released its Vision Pro headset in February, and Zuckerberg was quick to offer his critique of the competitor to Meta's Quest headsets .

"I have to say that before this, I expected that Quest would be the better value for most people since it's really good and like seven times less expensive, but after using [Vision Pro] I don't just think that Quest is the better value, it's the better product period," Zuckerberg said in a video on Threads. "They have different strengths, but overall Quest is better for the vast majority of things that people use mixed reality for."

Zuckerberg says many people "assumed that Vision Pro would be higher quality because it's Apple and it costs $3,000 more."

"I know that some fanboys get upset whenever anyone dares to question if Apple's going to be the leader in a new category," he said. "But the reality is that every generation of computing has an open and a closed model. And yeah, in mobile, Apple's closed model won, but it's not always that way."

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth has also taken shots at Apple over its Vision Pro .

"As soon as I put the headset on, I can see what trade-offs they made and why they made them. And, perhaps definitionally, those aren't the trade-offs I would have made," he said.

Bosworth called the Vision Pro's motion blur "really distracting" and said the headset was "very uncomfortable to use."

Read the original article on Business Insider

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We asked a psychologist for his take on Mark Zuckerberg's controversial email to staff. Here's what he said.

• A Meta lawsuit revealed emails Mark Zuckerberg sent to his employees in 2016.
• In one, he sternly told his team to "figure out" how to get past Snapchat's encryption.
• A therapist and psychologist said this can have different effects.

Newly unsealed emails in a lawsuit against Meta show that Mark Zuckerberg directed Facebook employees to track encrypted user analytics from Snapchat, a competitor, in 2016.

Beyond the ethically murky request to get through Snapchat's encryption, Zuckerberg ended his email with a stern, "You should figure out how to do this."

"The tone of this email is all about the task. No niceties," Ronald Riggio , a professor of leadership and organizational psychology at Claremont McKenna College in California, told Business Insider. He said this is "not uncommon" in bosses.

While curt, shame-based tactics can negatively impact employees and backfire on the business in the long run, Riggio said context is key, and that's not necessarily the case.

Stress is a murky motivator

The reason bosses send urgent, condescending emails is simple: On the outside, it can look like fear is a strong motivator for some people, Annie Wright , a licensed therapist, told BI.

She said that for people prone to hyperarousal of the nervous system when stressed, "an email like this might generate activity, determination, rapid action to soothe and please the boss." A people-pleaser might leap into action.

It might achieve immediate results but lead to high employee turnover. Bad bosses are one of the top reasons people leave their jobs .

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Additionally, Wright said that some people might react differently by shutting down. They experience hypoarousal of their nervous systems and freeze under pressure.

An email like Zuckerberg's can increase the chance of employees needing therapy to cope with a toxic work environment .

It creates a specific workplace culture

Riggio said the bigger issue with Zuckerberg's email is his unethical request — something that the tone of his email made it more difficult to say "no" to.

He said it can be hard to stand up to somebody with as much status and power as Zuckerberg, especially if their boss is task-focused.

"That's why a lot of leaders get into trouble," he said, referencing the recent Boeing controversy . In creating a strict, top-down, non-collaborative culture, "they do things, and the people following them look the other way or just continue."

Good leaders have more empathy

At face value, Riggio said there's nothing wrong with a "you can figure this out" email — depending on a boss's relationship with their employees.

"If the relationship has been one where you challenge your employees to take initiative and come up with novel solutions or be creative with how they're doing the task," he said, then a statement like that could signify trust rather than judgment.

Zuckerberg's unearthed 2016 email comes when more companies seek emotionally intelligent leaders who empathize with employees' emotions and make workplaces more unified and successful.

"A good boss, a good leader should do both: they should get things done, but they should also nurture the people who are following them," Riggio said.

Watch: 5 ways Elon Musk shook up Twitter as CEO

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