It's time for Mark Zuckerberg to resign from Meta

Rather than investigate all the things where investigative journalism could potentially make a difference to real human beings' lives, the Guardian has chosen to pursue a plea for the majority owner of Meta's voting shares (61%) to step down from his position of power. Let us politely ask Sisyphus to stop pushing the boulder instead.

I’m not sure the next CEO would do any better. The social media craze is built for addiction and that’s their business model. Investors won’t be on board, sadly.

    The CEO is the throughline in a history
    of billion-dollar blunders

Since the IPO, he created an annual ROI of 21% for his investors. Taking risks means blunders are part of the way I would say.

For comparison:

He outperformed the Nasdaq 100 which made 18% (plus dividends) in the same time.

And he way outperformed Warren Buffet who made 14% in the same time.

> through every scandal, Zuckerberg’s net worth has climbed to nearly $200bn, according to Forbes. Fines mean nothing to those with wealth like his, so the first step to safeguard society is to give Meta a fresh start without Zuckerberg’s influence on future products.

What is the author's model of a company?

Mark Zuckerberg owns the majority of voting shares. It's his company, over which he specifically wanted to retain control. Therefore, calling on the board to reign him in is... Misplaced.

If you think the actions of Meta are wrong and should be prevented, you need to act on the regulatory level, not appeal to the very shareholders who profit off the behaviour.

It's strange that while many parts of the world rely on WhatsApp for essential services, this weak link is almost never in the news. Don't people know that WhatsApp is under Meta? What if he pulls the plug? Is there anything preventing MZ from doing that? I'd sever that dependence first.

We can nope out of FB, IG, but what about WhatsApp?

Facebook doesn't even listen to countries beyond tier 2 as per their own disclosures - https://www.theverge.com/22743753/facebook-tier-list-countri...

I very much doubt that they listen to countries in tier 1 and 2 also. If not for the fear of US's relatively stronger regulations, don't think Meta would even pay attention to any complaints in US either.

This would not change with the change in leadership in Meta simply because 18Bn is fairly affordable for Meta's scale, but they should be worried about setting the legal precedent (though they denied any wrong doing).

Other countries may not have the same ability to impose penalties owing to their weaker laws also.

I wonder what's the net value Meta offers for the world today. I had a similar thought about Elon the other day, for all his billions, only several million people use Tesla or Starlink, and SpaceX is cool I guess, but value and wealth don't seem to be strongly coupled. How many Tesla investors have managed to cash out and how many of Facebook's advertisers managed to turn a profit?

Interesting how the author compares the situation to smoking. Were any of the execs of the tobacco companies asked to step down because smoking was found to be harmful to health? My guess is they simply continued and adapted based on how they could remain a profitable company with continued shareholder satisfaction.

Mark Zuckerberg is the PT Barnum of tech and Meta is his predatory circus. Meta doesn't make much sense without him.

> Last week, Meta[...] agreed to a settlement of up to $18bn [...].

>

> But if Meta is truly interested in prioritizing the safety of users [...]

Where did that "but" clause come from? Has that ever been a priority?

It wont get better with a replacement. Look at all the other big tech companies, it only gets worse.

Split it up as with AT&T Bell or Standard Oil, or stop complaining.

This article is very shortsighted.

If you think Meta is bad now, just wait until Zuck is replaced by a soulless, profit-obsessed corporate CEO whose primary job is maximizing shareholder profit. Meta as a company can get far worse.

People should really be careful what they wish for.

Meta could drop a new feature tomorrow and have the tech media in a shambles within 15 minutes. Their product family is used by 3.6 billion people every day. OAI and Anthropic are still measuring per month.

we will look back on it as the big tobacco of our generation

The company lives and dies with him.

Honestly, the world has grown past the need for Meta. I would not cry if it completely shut down, problem is, what will fill the void? It would be nice to have something not controlled by Big American Corporation (or Chinese, or any, for that matter), but somehow I don't see it happening.

WELL THEN, if Joan Donovan thinks so.

We haven't see any meaningful improvement from Meta for years.

Journalists are so cute

So says The Guardian, while showing me an illegal “Reject and Subscribe” tracking banner. Mixed messages.

> But if Meta is truly interested in prioritizing the safety of users

Why would it be interested in that? It's interested in increasing shareholder profits.

> It's time for Mark Zuckerberg to resign from Meta

What, like in the leadership of a political party? Meta does not work for the public good; if anything, it's rather the opposite. And it's not like another one of their people would change course and work and make it a public benefit company.

Meta as a company is too successful. It's influence on the western world is undeniably extensive.

Looking at the this picture & share holder value, Zuck is a successful CEO. I doubt any Meta insider would like Zuck to step-down.

I for one, would like Meta to crash & burn. People need to be free of its influence.

Eh dunno. My impression is that from the PoV of his notional bosses - Meta shareholders - he’s doing everything ”right”. Revenue up, addiction/recurring revenue stable, keeping fines low.

I’d be happy to see Meta gone altogether, but unless I missed the memo, Meta isn’t particularly upset about what it’s been up to (beyond bland press releases).

> put safety above profit.

I think does not reflect the reality of how competitive capitalism works.

He's not going to

He went out of the way to make his company structure prevent that (also Elon)

... says The Guardian tabloid.

hilarious and ironic

Sometimes, the Guardian publishes articles like this that just serve no purpose.

Zuckerberg is never resigning from Meta. Investors don't want him to resign from Meta.

What it is time for, though, is to ask ourselves as a society if the ad-fueled privacy-infringing depression-triggering attention-grabbing social media feeds are worth it.

People used to smoke. Now they dont. Change is possible.

> But if Meta is truly interested in prioritizing the safety of users, the board should request the resignation of Mark Zuckerberg and restructure to put safety above profit.

It is singularly idiotic that people think people, companies, boards, governments, or anyone else should be "good", and that society will progress by rooting out "evil" ones, as adjudicated by their own standards.

People and by extension companies of people and by extension corporations, NGOs, governments, and everything else in society behaves according to incentives. "Safety of users" or "approval of The Guardian employees" does not rank particularly highly in the incentive scale next to money for anybody, least of all Facebook shareholders, lol.

The factors that influence behaviors are pretty simple. Money, negative money, threat of judicial or ultrajudicial retribution, etc. The people as a whole have levers to pull in order to shape society as they would like. Wishing for good and praying for evil to be dispelled are not among them, that's just like any other superstition.

Absolutely idiotic take. Why is the Guardian peddling this opinion piece?

Stepping down as CEO would do nothing, so unless you plan on forcing him to sell his share IDK what the point of the article is.

Mark Zuckerberg (13.68% equity; 61.2% voting)[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_Platforms

Meta should just close. It's like wanting to change CEO for the dioxin factory.