During a Senate hearing, Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the issue of children being exploited, bullied, or driven to self-harm through social media, bringing back a familiar topic.

“I apologize for all that you have experienced,” stated the CEO of Meta on Wednesday. “No one should have to endure the same hardships that you and your loved ones have faced.” He then switched back to business mode, mentioning Meta’s ongoing investments in initiatives to safeguard children across the industry.

Mark Zuckerberg has a track record of making public apologies, usually in response to a crisis or when Facebook users express dissatisfaction with unexpected changes to the platform. This sets him apart from other tech leaders who tend to avoid public speaking outside of controlled product launches. However, it’s worth noting that Facebook has had numerous incidents that have warranted apologies.

Whether or not the public always buys his apologies, there’s little doubt that Zuckerberg finds it important to make them himself. Here’s a quick, and by no means comprehensive, compendium of some notable Zuckerberg apologies and the circumstances that brought them on.

BLINDED BY BEACON

The first major privacy issue for Facebook involved a feature called Beacon, which was introduced in 2007. This feature aimed to revolutionize advertising by tracking user purchases and actions on external websites and sharing them on friends’ newsfeeds without prior consent. However, after facing significant criticism, Zuckerberg acknowledged the mistakes made in implementing this feature and ultimately removed it.

Rewording not possible.

During the early days of Facebook, there was a story about how the 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg made fun of the 4,000 students who had joined his new service. He boasted to his friends through text messages about the huge amount of personal information he had gathered, taking advantage of the misplaced trust of his users. Zuckerberg even used profanity to describe these users as “dumb”. In 2010, when Silicon Alley Insider (a predecessor to Business Insider) published these messages, Zuckerberg apologized during an interview for a New Yorker article, admitting that he regretted making those remarks.

Concealing a government agreement

On November 9, 2011, the Federal Trade Commission imposed stricter regulations on Facebook regarding privacy. This was in response to the company’s actions of making private information public without warning, not restricting data sharing with apps even when users had strict settings, and sharing personal information with advertisers despite previous claims not to do so.

On the same day, Zuckerberg shared a lengthy essay titled “Our Commitment to the Facebook Community” consisting of 1,418 words. However, it did not address the FTC action until one-third of the way into the essay. In the essay, Zuckerberg acknowledged past mistakes, such as the Beacon feature, as “a series of errors.”

VR TOUR OF A DISASTER ZONE

Zuckerberg’s fascination with virtual reality long predated his decision to rename the company Facebook as Meta Platforms. On Oct. 9, 2017, he and a Facebook employee starred in a live VR tour of Puerto Rico in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Maria. The pair beamed themselves into prerecorded 3-D footage of the damage and recovery efforts; Zuckerberg described the you-are-there feeling as “one of the really magical things about virtual reality,” especially given, as he said, that “it’s a really tough place to get to now.”

Later, he elaborated on Facebook’s efforts to recover from the disaster. However, the video received numerous complaints due to its conflicting message. As a result, Zuckerberg posted a short apology during the video chat, acknowledging that his attempt to showcase the company’s recovery efforts was not well-explained and apologizing to those who were offended.

CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA

In 2018, it was revealed that Facebook permitted apps to collect a significant amount of data from both user accounts and their friends’ accounts without any supervision. Although numerous apps were implicated, the spotlight quickly turned to one specific app that obtained data from 87 million Facebook users and shared it with Cambridge Analytica, a U.K. company specializing in political data analysis that was connected to Steve Bannon, a political strategist for then-President Trump. This data was allegedly utilized to target voters during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which ultimately led to Trump’s victory.

Zuckerberg first apologized for the scandal on CNN, saying that Facebook has a “responsibility” to protect its users’ data, and that if it fails, “we don’t deserve to have the opportunity to serve people.” He gave a version of that apology later that year in testimony before Congress, saying that “we didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility” while also failures in cracking down on fake news and hate speech, poor data privacy controls and not adequately addressing foreign interference in the 2016 elections on Facebook.

Source: wral.com