It’s an irresistible dystopian image, though one that seems as likely to come to pass as big tech regulating itself
Can anything make Mark Zuckerberg feel anything, unless it physically involves Mark Zuckerberg himself, perhaps being kicked in the head by choice? Or is emotion the Meta boss’s phantom limb, twitching semi-regularly as a reminder of what he hacked off back in his Harvard dorm room all those years ago, as he began the long journey toward behavioural-modification, misinformation-spreading and selling the lives of billions of users to advertisers?
Please: try to picture him feeling something. Conjure Zuckerberg’s face as he scrolls through content he is unwilling to remove from any of his platforms, the sort of horrors that could destroy the sanity of a sweatshopped Kenyan moderator inside of six weeks, but which merely have Zuck reaching ice-bloodedly for a free speech argument. Try to imagine his reaction to whistleblower testimony before some parliament or other about Facebook’s ruinous impacts on young people, while wondering inside why he ever even toyed with getting into politics, given that all politicians are merely junior personnel.
