While Facebook has managed to weather the obstacles that came in its way as a lot of people started to mistrust it after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg has not really been able to find quite as much success in swaying the favor of the public towards himself.
While he has been trying to reinvent himself constantly after a wide variety of scandals during the early years of his reign as CEO of Facebook, a lot of people have continued to call him out each time. One example of this can be seen in the aftermath of a recent speech that Zuckerberg gave, one in which he claimed that his intention while creating Facebook had been to create a platform that encouraged political expression.
While he may very well want people to think of him as some kind of revolutionary and champion of free political expression, former Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos has refuted these claims. He has pointed to the fact that Facebook originated as a kind of website where people could rate the attractiveness of other people, kind of like the decidedly unseemly “Hot or Not” which is decidedly not a place designed to facilitate free expression of any kind.
This call out seems to be rather appropriate considering how Zuckerberg is trying to sell a revisionist history of his creation of the social media platform. While Facebook is certainly a space for political dialogue now for better or for worse, it’s important to remember that it originated as a simple project that was meant for rather superficial uses and was not prepared for the influence that it would soon end up getting. No matter how hard Zuckerberg tries to change things, his hand in Facebook’s growth into a major communication platform is not as significant as he might want to believe.
Photo: AP
Read next: Facebook creeps into the digital healthcare industry
While he has been trying to reinvent himself constantly after a wide variety of scandals during the early years of his reign as CEO of Facebook, a lot of people have continued to call him out each time. One example of this can be seen in the aftermath of a recent speech that Zuckerberg gave, one in which he claimed that his intention while creating Facebook had been to create a platform that encouraged political expression.
While he may very well want people to think of him as some kind of revolutionary and champion of free political expression, former Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos has refuted these claims. He has pointed to the fact that Facebook originated as a kind of website where people could rate the attractiveness of other people, kind of like the decidedly unseemly “Hot or Not” which is decidedly not a place designed to facilitate free expression of any kind.
- Also read: Facebook Receives Backlash by Employees upon Changing the Company’s Policy on Political Ads
This call out seems to be rather appropriate considering how Zuckerberg is trying to sell a revisionist history of his creation of the social media platform. While Facebook is certainly a space for political dialogue now for better or for worse, it’s important to remember that it originated as a simple project that was meant for rather superficial uses and was not prepared for the influence that it would soon end up getting. No matter how hard Zuckerberg tries to change things, his hand in Facebook’s growth into a major communication platform is not as significant as he might want to believe.
Photo: AP
Read next: Facebook creeps into the digital healthcare industry
