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Mark Zuckerberg’s long-term vision for Facebook, laid out in a sweeping manifesto, sometimes sounds more like a utopian social guide than a business plan. Are we, he asks, “building the world we all want?”
While most people now use Facebook to connect with friends and family, Zuckerberg hopes that the social network can encourage more civic engagement, an informed public and community support in the years to come. Facebook now has nearly 2 billion members, which makes it larger than any nation in the world.
His 5,800-word essay positions Facebook in direct opposition to a rising tide of isolationism and fear of outsiders, both in the U.S. and abroad. In a phone interview with The Associated Press, Zuckerberg stressed that he wasn’t motivated by the U.S. election or any other particular event. Rather, he said, it’s the growing sentiment in many parts of the world that “connecting the world” — the founding idea behind Facebook — is no longer a good thing.
“Across the world there are people left behind by globalization, and movements for withdrawing from global connection,” Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, wrote on Thursday. “In times like these, the most important thing we at Facebook can do is develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us.”
Zuckerberg, 32, said he still strongly believes that more connectedness is the right direction for the world. But, he adds, it’s “not enough if it’s good for some people but it’s doesn’t work for other people. We really have to bring everyone along.”
The letter is short on specific details and plans Facebook has in the works. And it doesn’t mention anything about Facebook as a business, its billions in advertising revenue or the targeting it is often criticized for. Zuckerberg said Facebook provides regular updates on how its business is doing and product launches —and this is meant to be different.
Today, most of Facebook’s 1.86 billion members — about 85 percent — live outside of the U.S. and Canada. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company has offices everywhere from Amsterdam to Jakarta to Tel Aviv. (It is banned in China, the world’s most populous country, though some get around it.) Naturally, Zuckerberg takes a global view of Facebook and sees potential that goes beyond borders, cities and nations.
And that could allow the social network to step up as more traditional cultural ties fray. People already use Facebook to connect with strangers who have the same rare disease, to post political diatribes, to share news links (and sometimes fake news links). Facebook has also pushed its users to register to vote, to donate to causes, to mark themselves safe after natural disasters, and to “go live .”
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