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fact performs a starring function in Evan Osnos' thorough profile of fb CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the New Yorker, posted the day prior to this. there is a quick appearance of the regrettable deepest message that Zuckerberg, then 19 years historical, despatched to a friend about clients of his new provider: "They 'have faith me.' Dumb fucks." there is the uncomfortable truth that deepest-existence Zuckerberg, now 34, isn't rather what his public picture tasks—a contrast that "reminded me of Hillary Clinton," the writer writes. And there's, of course, the Russian election interference and Cambridge Analytica scandals that put facebook's good executives in scorching water for now not being truthful about what happened, when, and how.
but the aspect that leaves the greatest impact is Zuckerberg's personal relationship with the truth. Given his lofty position at fb, "it's complicated for him to get exact, unexpurgated feedback" from employees, Osnos writes. What's more, the CEO's "unwillingness to heed warnings," his college hacker mentality lengthy hardened, has made any efforts to "puncture his personal bubble," in Osnos' phrases, under, smartly, fair.
It's a humorous flip of phrase, come to believe of it. Zuckerberg has lengthy labored in a pitcher rectangle—a fishbowl of a kind—at fb's Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters. The gesture is supposed to bring the CEO's radical transparency, however to me, it has lengthy communicated the contrary. The bubble boy at the back of "circulation speedy and break issues" hardly wanted to shatter his own barrier in pursuit of fact, despite the fact unpleasant. someplace along the way to fitting a Fortune 500 media govt, Osnos notes, Zuckerberg all started to peer advantage in rejecting complaints. "There's at all times a person who wants to slow you down," Zuckerberg referred to in a commencement handle at Harvard final 12 months.
right here's the element concerning the information, although: they are stabilizing. notwithstanding Zuckerberg, a Roman history buff, has chosen his method—"Like Augustus, he is at peace together with his trade-offs. Between speech and actuality, he selected speech," Osnos writes—he may still be shrewd to bear in mind how that story ends: with Nero, a fine hearth, and a fabled fiddle.
