Facebook fake news row: Mark Zuckerberg is a politician now

[phallon]

By Dave Lee
North America technology reporter
19 November 2016

I’ve long suspected that Mark Zuckerberg, who often refers to himself as the “leader” of Facebook, has dreams of high office.

This week, a taster of what that might be like has been knocking at his door in the wake of the US election result.
While Donald Trump’s visit to the White House was an apparently sobering experience about the level of responsibility he’d soon inherit, Zuckerberg has had a brutal political awakening of his own.

Facebook’s “fake news” crisis has had the normally stoic 32-year-old visibly irritated, and that’s because for the first time he is being treated like a politician, rather than just a tech CEO.

With that comes distrust and anger, not to mention disloyalty in the Facebook ranks and what for him must be the growing realisation that it’s impossible to please everyone.

Whether Zuckerberg was right to say fake news had little impact is largely irrelevant. By dismissing it apparently without second thought as “crazy”, he attracted a global pitchfork of people demanding that he at the very least acknowledge the potential role his empire had in Donald Trump’s election win.

That interview, carried out by journalist David Kirkpatrick, also contained one other exchange which should give Zuckerberg some serious food for thought -  and may even represent the biggest threat the network and its leader is yet to face.

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[link:http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38036730|
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38036730]

[GeorgeGist]

1. As you noted ...

he protest too much.