Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s remarks to staff on a wide range of topics have been leaked.
Zuckerberg’s comments were made at a pair of all-hands meetings with Facebook employees in July, and relayed in a transcript published by the Verge based on leaked secret audio recordings.
In wide-ranging remarks, Zuckerberg spoke more freely than he typically does in public, vowing to fight antitrust efforts to break up Facebook, as Senator Elizabeth Warren has called for in her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Zuckerberg also revealed that the company is in ‘private engagements’ with regulators to win approval for its cryptocurrency Libra.
He also dismissed reports of traumatized content moderators as ‘overdramatic’ and revealed that he would have been fired as CEO in 2006 if he didn’t have control of the company.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes rounds of private meetings with lawmakers in the Russell Building where he discussed technology regulations last month
In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Zuckerberg confirmed the authenticity of the transcript.
‘Every week I do a Q&A at Facebook where employees get to ask me anything and I share openly what I’m thinking on all kinds of projects and issues,’ he wrote.
‘The transcript from one of my Q&As a few months ago just got published online — and even though it was meant to be internal rather than public, now that it’s out there, you can check it out if you’re interested,’ he continued.
Facebook has held ‘private meetings’ to launch its digital currency Libra
Facebook in June announced plans to launch a digital currency called Libra, and was met with criticism from regulators.
Notably, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said in July that ‘the project can go forward’ without addressing concerns about ‘privacy, money laundering, consumer protection and financial stability.’
Zuckerberg remarked at the meeting that ‘private engagement’ with regulators, out of the media spotlight, would be key to securing approval.
‘Part of the process is going to be public, like the hearings that [Facebook VP of messaging products David Marcus] did over the last couple of days,’ he said.
Zuckerberg’s face is visible on a mock ‘Zuck Buck’ depicted on a screen behind David Marcus, CEO of Facebook’s Calibra digital wallet service, as he is questioned Congress in July
‘The public things, I think, tend to be a little more dramatic. But a bigger part of it is private engagement with regulators around the world, and those, I think, often are more substantive and less dramatic,’ he continued.
The CEO also said that Facebook hoped to have 100 private partners by the time Libra launches, after securing 27 partners for the initial announcement.
Facebook has said that the first version of the project is supposed to launch sometime next year.
Zuckerberg says reports that 30,000 comment moderators were traumatized by their work were ‘overdramatic’
Facebook employs some 30,000 content moderators worldwide, most of them outside contractors, who are tasked with reviewing and removing content that is violent, extremist, or otherwise banned.
In recent months, several reports have emerged detailing the stress and trauma that contractors endure watching violent videos for much of the day.
Content moderators work at a Facebook office in Austin, Texas in a file photo. Zuckerberg called reports that the moderators were traumatized ‘overdramatic’
‘Some of the reports, I think, are a little overdramatic,’ Zuckerberg said. ‘From digging into them and understanding what’s going on, it’s not that most people are just looking at just terrible things all day long.’
‘Within a population of 30,000 people, there’s going to be a distribution of experiences that people have,’ he continued.
‘We want to do everything we can to make sure that even the people who are having the worst experiences, that we’re making sure that we support them as well as possible.’
Zuckerberg vows to ‘go to the mat’ to fight antitrust push from Elizabeth Warren
Asked about calls to break up Facebook, including that from Senator Elizabeth Warren, Zuckerberg responded that the company would ‘go to the mat’ to fight a breakup.
‘I have to say one of the things that I love and appreciate about our country the most is that we have a really solid rule of law, which is very different from a lot of other places around the world,’ he said.
On Warren, he said: ‘I mean, if she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge. And does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government.’
‘I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government,’ he continued. ‘But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.’
Zuckerberg addressed calls from Senator Elizabeth Warren (above) to break up Facebook, saying it would ‘suck’ if she got elected and pursued antitrust regulation
Warren quickly responded in a tweet, writing: ‘What would really ‘suck’ is if we don’t fix a corrupt system that lets giant companies like Facebook engage in illegal anticompetitive practices, stomp on consumer privacy rights.’
Zuckerberg said that breaking up tech companies would not solve issues such as election interference and monitoring violent content.
‘It makes it more likely because now … all the processes that we’re putting in place and investing in, now we’re more fragmented,’ he said.
Zuckerberg admits he would have been fired years ago if he didn’t have control of the company
Through shares with special voting rights, Zuckerberg controls nearly 60% of the shareholder voting power at Facebook, putting him firmly in control of the board and making it effectively impossible to fire him.
In May, outside shareholders revolted, with 68% voting to oust Zuckerberg as chairman and 83% voting to implement a ‘one share, one vote’ system — measures that failed due to Zuckerberg’s veto.
In his leaked remarks, Zuckerberg revealed that he would have been fired long ago without control of the board.
‘In 2006, when Yahoo wanted to buy our company, I probably would’ve been fired, and we would have sold the company. We wouldn’t even be here if I didn’t have control,’ he said.
Zuckerberg testifies during a Senate hearing last year. He says he would have been fired as CEO long ago if he didn’t have voting control of the company
‘Going back to 2006 when we were just a college service, and we were about to roll out open registration so everyone can sign up, and we were about to launch News Feed, which didn’t exist yet. And like Yahoo came in with this big offer for a billion dollars, which is, like, was going to, like, fulfill everyone’s financial dreams for the company,’ he said.
‘And I was like, ‘I don’t really think we should do this.’ And everyone was like ‘What?’ And at the time, we had 10 million people using Facebook, and Myspace had 100 million people, and it was growing faster.’
‘So I turn it down, and our board was super upset. Our whole management team basically quit,’ he continued.
Employees should tell friends who criticize Facebook that the company ‘cares about the problems’
‘I think humanizing stuff is always really important,’ Zuckerberg said when asked what employees should say to friends to trash-talk Facebook.
‘I think it’s tough to break down these perceptions and build trust until you get to a place where people know that you have their best interests at heart. So that’s one thing that you all will be well-suited to do as ambassadors, if you choose to be, having spent time here, as I think you know the heart of this place at this point,’ he said.
He continued: ‘I just find that sitting down and talking to people and having them know that you care about the problems and acknowledge that there are issues and that you’re working through them … I think it just makes a big difference.’
Facebook is pursuing neural interfaces ‘but not brain surgery’
‘Brain-computer interface is an exciting idea,’ Zuckerberg said in the leaked transcript.
The CEO pointed out that the field is separated into two approaches: invasive and noninvasive.
Zuckerberg says Facebook is pursuing ‘non invasive’ neural interfaces to augment AR and VR interfaces such as the Oculus VR headset seen above
‘Invasive being things that require surgery or implants, but have the advantage that it’s actually in your brain, so you can get more signal. Non-invasive is like, you wear a band or, for glasses, you shine an optical light and get a sense of blood flow in certain areas of the brain. You get less signal from noninvasive,’ he said.
‘We’re more focused on — I think completely focused on non-invasive,’ he continued, drawing laughter from the room.
‘We’re trying to make AR and VR a big thing in the next five years to 10 years … I don’t know, you think Libra is hard to launch. “Facebook wants to perform brain surgery,” I don’t want to see the congressional hearings on that one.’
Zuckerberg refuses to do hearings in other countries
‘I’m not going to go to every single hearing around the world,’ Zuckerberg said.
‘A lot of different people want to do that. When the issues came up last year around Cambridge Analytica, I did hearings in the US. I did hearings in the EU,’ he continued.
‘It just doesn’t really make sense for me to go to hearings in every single country that wants to have me show up and, frankly, doesn’t have jurisdiction to demand that.’
