Mark Zuckerberg/GettyImages
In one of his famous photos, Mark Zuckerberg was photographed in the Facebook offices, with a simple work position like that of a junior employee instead of a luxurious and spacious office, befitting the CEO of the world's largest social network. But one detail stood out in the photo: the webcam on Zuckerberg's mobile phone was covered In a sticky film. The irony: the man who made hundreds of billions of dollars crushes the privacy of all of us, afraid that someone will film him through the webcam on the computer. This contrast perhaps best sums up Mark Zuckerberg's personality: I do things for others that I don't do myself.
Zuckerberg doesn't often give interviews , and even when he changed the name of his company from Facebook to Meta, in a bizarre way he chose to give his first interview to a relatively unknown YouTuber instead of coming forward and talking about the change on the major technology and news sites, which adds a kind of mystery to him and over the years a series of rumors stuck to him, from being on the autistic spectrum to that he is planning to run for the presidency of the United States. But here are some details about the man.
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The Meta logo at the entrance to the official headquarters in California/Reuters
"cliff-net"
Let's start with this simple fact: Mark Zuckerberg is a cream boy.
Unlike some prominent business figures who came from humble or difficult backgrounds, the same cannot be said for Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg, born May 14, 1984, was born in White Plains, New York, to a dentist father named Edward who owned a small clinic next to the house, and a psychotherapist mother named Karen.
Mark has three siblings: Randy, Donna and Ariel.
Mark showed an interest in programming from a young age, and even in his youth wrote several programs and computer games in the BASIC language, among them the communication software "Zuk-Net" which his father used in his clinic as a communication tool with the secretary who could inform him of the arrival of a client for treatment without shouting... Zuk-Net was used the members of the Zuckerberg family for internal communication within the house.
High school he attended a private and mixed boarding school, Philip Exeter Academy, whose purpose is to foster academic excellence and preparation for the prestigious colleges, and from there in 2002, Zuckerberg was admitted to the prestigious Harvard University in Massachusetts to study computer science.
Zuckerberg dropped out of his studies two years later, after he founded Facebook with his dorm mates (also read the first part) and decided to devote all his time to the development of the company he founded, something that also happened to several technology giants before him, the most prominent of them - Steve Jobs, who also never graduated academic.
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The serial apologist
Zuckerberg is a centralized manager.
The list of his titles will testify to this: he is the founder, general manager and chairman of his company.
When Facebook came to a head due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, some of Facebook's major shareholders (among them the Comptroller General of the State of New York, whose employee pension fund is among the largest shareholders in Facebook) called on him to give up one of the positions (CEO or Chairman of the Board the executives), but Zuckerberg refused. The interesting part is that even the shareholders could not force him, since Facebook's share structure leaves the control of the company in the hands of Zuckerberg and in the hands of a small group of his loyalists, among them, for example, was Sheryl Sunberg, Facebook's chief operating officer , and who is considered the strongest woman and number two on Facebook.
Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, and who is considered the most powerful woman and number two at Facebook/GettyImages
After the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in 2018, in which it was discovered that Trump's campaign team, through a British third-party company associated with him, had access to the private information of 87 million Facebook users in the United States, Zuckerberg was paralyzed (metaphorically), and it took him a few days to come to terms with the media and give explanations in interviews, explanations that he did not have.
On March 25, Facebook bought full-page ads in seven British newspapers and three newspapers in the United States, and published an apology letter from Zuckerberg.
He promised that the company will thoroughly investigate all its applications and make the necessary changes to better protect the personal information of Facebook users and the other platforms it owns (including Instagram and WhatsApp).
"I'm sorry we didn't do more at the time, I promise to try harder," wrote the founder of the world's largest social network.
This will not be his last apology.
"I'm sorry we didn't do more at the time, I promise to try harder," wrote the founder of the world's largest social network/Reuters
Zuckerberg also testified before Congress in the midst of the storm, and managed to evade the cross-questioning of the elected representatives of the American people, but at the cost of embarrassing himself to a certain extent, when he had to tell senators and members of Congress - "I will have to find out and get back to you on this matter" (something Facebook never did). And when he said that "Facebook has competitors", there was simply a burst of laughter in the committee's discussion hall - because Facebook, which is a huge monster, does not actually have any competitors, and the people in the hall knew it too.
Just last week, Mark Zuckerberg was forced to apologize again, publicly, and also in a hearing room of the American Congress.
As part of a hearing held for all the heads of the major social networks, Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter and others, about the harm caused to children on their platforms, from exploitation, through bullying to self-harm.
In a particularly awkward moment, one of the senators asked him if he didn't want to apologize to the parents of the injured children who were present in the hall.
Zuckerberg had no choice.
He stood up, turned to his parents and said: "I'm sorry for what you went through. No one should have to go through the experiences you and your families endured," said the Facebook founder.
Last week, Mark Zuckerberg was again forced to apologize, publicly, and also in a hearing room of the US Congress/Reuters
Zuckerberg has accumulated quite a few apologies under his belt for stupid actions and statements he has said in the past.
Apart from those we have already mentioned, one of the most prominent of them was his bragging in a text message at the age of 19, about the first 4,000 Facebook subscribers, whom he called "idiots" about the amount of private information he collected from them thanks to the trust they placed in him.
When the magazine "Silicon Valley Insider" (later Business Insider), published the message in 2010, Zuckerberg had to apologize and said that he "totally regrets" these statements.
He may regret the statement, but not the practice that made him one of the ten richest people in the world, and one of the youngest billionaires ever.
Mark Zuckerberg answers questions from members of Congress in the investigation against Facebook/photo: Reuters
The oath of giving
But Zuckerberg is also doing some good things with his big bucks.
He and his wife Priscilla Chan (who, by the way, got married the day after Facebook's initial public offering), are deeply involved in a series of philanthropic projects that bear their name, and Zuckerberg is among the younger signatories of the "Giving Oath" in which he pledges to donate at least 50 percent of his wealth to charity during his lifetime.
Other signatories to this pledge are Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and George Lucas.
Zuckerberg urged other young venture capitalists to follow his lead.
He and his wife also pledged in an open letter to their daughter (the couple has two daughters - Max and August), to donate 99 percent of the Facebook shares they own to charity.
Among their interesting contributions is one hundred million dollars to save the public school system in Newark, New Jersey. The CZI initiative, which consists of the initials of their last names, has pledged to donate three billion dollars to scientific research in the coming decade to cure and prevent all diseases in their lifetime.
The initiative was headed by Corey Bergman, a neurologist from Rockefeller University.
The couple also founded the "Biohub" that bears their name, an independent research center in San Francisco that brings together engineers, computer scientists, biologists, chemists and others in one scientific community, under the roof of Stanford and California universities.
The center will receive 600 million dollars as initial funding over a decade.
Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan
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A post shared by Mark Zuckerberg (@zuck)
Dessert: meat I hunted myself and a battle of billionaires
And you can't write an article about Mark Zuckerberg without mentioning his unusual hobbies, aside from destroying the privacy of all of us full-time.
In 2018, after it became known that the Russians and other foreign actors were heavily using Facebook to sway the results of the 2016 election, Zuckerberg announced a "personal challenge" to develop methods to protect Facebook users from abuse by nation states.
His other personal challenges included things like eating only meat he hunted and killed himself and learning Mandarin.
Zuckerberg is also a well-known surfer and his latest hobby to make headlines is mixed martial arts, quite unusually:
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A post shared by Israel Adesanya (@stylebender)
Zuckerberg has been practicing jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts (MMA) pretty seriously since the coronavirus, and has even competed and won a silver and gold medal in a tournament or two.
The one who, in a strange way, invited him to "take a beating" is Elon Musk, in a tweet on Twitter, of course.
Zuckerberg quickly accepted the challenge, when the idea was really to put these two in the ring at a big event, and sell viewing rights that would be donated to charity.
When the idea was really to put these two in the ring at a big event, and sell viewing rights that would be donated to charity./GettyImages, ShutterStock
But after several exchanges of online bites that lasted a few months, it seems that the one who got cold feet was actually the initiator, Musk.
Zuckerberg, who actually takes his martial arts seriously, said that Musk was "not serious".
This did not prevent him, by the way, from setting up a standard mixed wrestling arena in his yard for the purpose of training for the battle of the billionaires, this to protect the heart of his wife, who was furious at the destruction of the grass she had cultivated for three years.
No big deal, he'll buy her a new one.
With a fortune estimated at $45 billion, he can afford it.
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