Facebook looks to stem tide of isolationism
Zuckerberg airs sweeping vision
NEW YORK — 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, California-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 people 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 .” For many, it’s become a utility. Some 1.23 billion people use it daily.
Facebook groups, which allow people to come together based on shared interests, could play a bigger role in this respect, Zuckerberg suggests. In groups, people talk about everything from knitting to parenting to political activism . More than 100 million people are in at least one Facebook group, though Zuckerberg wants way more. He laments the fading of traditional social communities such as churches, labor unions and local groups.
“A healthy society needs these communities to support our personal, emotional and spiritual needs,” Zuckerberg wrote. “In a world where this physical social infrastructure has been declining, we have a real opportunity to help strengthen these communities and the social fabric of our society.”
Zuckerberg has gotten Facebook to this position of global dominance — one that Myspace and Twitter, for instance, never even approached — partly thanks to his audacious, long-term view of the company and its place in the world.
Rather than getting fixated on the next quarter’s profit or the next day’s user uproar, he tends to consider Facebook 5, 10 or more years into the future. It’s as grandiose as it’s been successful, at least so far.