“I'm sorry for everything you've been through. “No one should have suffered like you and your families.” With these words, Mark Zuckerberg apologized before the United States Senate for the mental health problems that minors suffer daily on social networks.
This is not the first nor the second time that the leader and founder of the social media empire has appeared before the public to apologize for his conduct as a businessman. The forgiveness for the Cambridge Analytica scandal was one of the most notable, but other moments in which 'Zuck' – that's what he calls himself on Instagram – has wanted to redeem himself, have also been relevant. Early in his career, he apologized for mocking 4,000 students he called “stupid” for leaving much of his personal data in Facebook's hands. He did the same on two other occasions by apologizing for security breaches in the data privacy policy.
In the technology sector, it is unusual for a leader of such magnitude to repeatedly assume the mea culpa. Whether this strategy works is debatable, since even though users continue to use the service, its reputation as a leader is damaged. “Zuckerberg will go down in history as the great architect of Internet communication, but his figure as its leader is incomplete,” says Xavier Marcet, director of the consulting firm LeadtoChange. According to Marcet, the character has lost his aura of an ambitious and brilliant entrepreneur trained at Harvard University. “He has known how to create a social media giant, but he has not known how to manage the consequences of its impact on society,” he maintains.
He is an “ambivalent” figure, he says. Despite successive crises, she has resisted and has remained at the center of the debate. This has, first of all, a legal explanation: Zuckerberg has shielded himself in power through a decision-making system that is under his absolute control. He owns 90% of the class B shares, which grant 10 votes per share while the vast majority of owners own class A shares, which only grant one vote for each share. So Zuckerberg can run Facebook for as long as he wants.
In any case, Iván Bofarull, professor and director of innovation at Esade, maintains that his leadership is assured for the coming years due to his ambitious plan to dominate the metaverse. “Despite the rise of AI, this change of direction towards the metaverse will bring new alliances and operations and Zuckerberg has always been able to get the most out of them,” says the professor, referring to Instagram and Whatsapp purchases.
If compared with his rivals, Zuckerberg's figure is eclipsed by that of Elon Musk, the eccentric tycoon who controls Twitter and Tesla, and also by the character of Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, whose millionaire whims continue to cause astonishment. But neither Zuckerberg nor anyone around him will surpass the bar set by Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. “He is the great reference of the digital culture of Silicon Valley,” says Marcet.
Taking a look at his public profile on Instagram, one can deduce that the creator of Facebook is making an attempt to humanize his figure. He posts images of his family – including his minor children – and shares photographs of the hobbies he practices in his free time. He is addicted to sports, especially martial arts, such as jujitsu. In fact, last summer Zuckerberg challenged Elon Musk to a fight (which never took place).
As for her image, she has always remained intact “as if she moved in the world like an avatar,” noted internet critic Amanda Hess, in The New York Times. His haircut has always been the same and as an entrepreneur he wears a short-sleeved t-shirt – dark, in his case – tight jeans and sneakers. An image that only changes because of the suit and tie when he goes before the public authorities to testify about his responsibilities.
At 39 years old (he turns 40 in May), Zuckerberg accumulates a fortune of 125.3 billion dollars, which is equivalent to about 115 billion euros. According to calculations made by Forbes magazine, this figure makes him the fifth richest person in the world, even one position above tycoon Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft. Ahead, Elon Musk surpasses him; Bernard Arnault, from the luxury group LVMH; Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison, leader of Oracle.
The myth of the self-made man is fulfilled, in part, in the case of the creator of Facebook. He was born in the city of White Plains (New York) into a wealthy and Jewish family (a religion that Zuckerberg has practiced for seven years). His father was a dentist and his mother was a psychiatrist. At school, he was an introverted child who stood out for his analytical abilities. At the age of twelve he was already programming and, when he arrived at university, he enrolled in Computer Science. He entered the prestigious Harvard University and there, more than studying, he worked with his roommates to create the first seed of Facebook. His ambition was such that, after two courses (at 19 years old) he left the classroom to direct the social network that would end up changing the course of the world's history of communication.
