Headlines on January 31st claimed that Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, had apologized at a U.S. Senate hearing to parents whose children had died as a result of suicide from cyberbullying, asphyxiation from participating in the “blackout challenge,” body-image issues, and more. Parents for Safe Online Spaces had gathered at the hearing with framed photos of their children who had died.
The issue of teen suicide from internet use came to the fore in 2023.
Media outlets, whistleblowers, and lawsuits in 2023 reveal that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, fuels child sexual exploitation, providing a platform for pedophiles, and enabling sexually explicit and other harmful content that targets teens, especially teen girls. Meta has been sued by the District of Columbia and 41 states, which claim its products are addictive and potentially harmful to children and their mental health.
Other social media platforms are no better. Snapchat has been used to “lure and sexually exploit children.” The New York Times reported last year that X (formerly Twitter) has struggled to confront its child sexual exploitation problem. Parents are suing Roblox over sexual content on its platform. The U.S. surgeon general has warned about the mental health crisis among America’s youth and about the harm that social media can have on them. Children are vulnerable to influences they see online, and the impact of that content can even be life-threatening.
As a Washington Post article on February 1st noted:
“Zuckerberg is one of five tech executives called to testify during the hearing, which was primarily organized to address issues like the prevalence of child sexual abuse material or CSAM. The hearing has also covered other safety issues related to teens and children on social media, such as cyberbullying, body-image issues, grooming, drugs and suicide.”
Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) pressed Zuckerberg to apologize to the parents, and “Zuck” turned to face them, saying “I’m sorry for everything you have all been through. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered.” He added that the company was continuing to work on the issue to prevent other families from going through similar experiences.
After this “apology,” Hawley pressed on and asked, “You’re a billionaire. Will you commit to compensating the victims? Will you set up a victims compensation fund with your own money?
Of course he did not answer yes or no. Here’s what he should have said: “No, Senator, I am the CEO of a major U.S. corporation, and we make no apologies for making money within the limits of the law. That’s what I’m paid to do. I’m here to maximize shareholder value, for all the stockholders, including me, the very biggest shareholder. That’s what corporations are supposed to do in America. So I won’t apologize for being an American capitalist. It’s up to you lawmakers to set reasonable limits on what we do. If you can’t figure out how to legislate to protect the public instead of harassing me, that’s on you.”
In short, Zuckerberg’s non-apology was perfectly legal. True accountability, of course, would mean that victims could sue corporations for continuing to do harm when they are perfectly aware of the effects on innocent children. It remains for members of Congress, many of whom (legally) get campaign funds from Big Tech, to figure all this out. But don’t hold your breath.
The antics of Silicon Valley “alpha dogs” have reached a new and disturbing level. In the public interest, PLBW offers some extraordinary writing by Lora Kelly of the Atlantic magazine. By way of preface, your “perfectly legal but wrong” commentator notes that much of the world’s problems these days come down to men that want to “swing their dicks” (so to speak) and show that they can beat down anyone else. For example, both Donald Trump and Vladamir Putin seem like two peas in a pod in that particular way.
But raising yourself by beating down others is the essential madness of toxic masculinity: being “top dog” will always be short-lived, and is no way to live life as a human. Do you really want to feel great about yourself because you can beat down all challengers? Take some advice from George Foreman, former heavyweight boxing champ, in his interview with Terri Gross on Fresh Air from 1995:
“I’m having knockout after knockout, starting to look at myself in the mirror ––I see this body, I see this face ––I see this man who’s going to be heavyweight champ of the world. He is the king of men: he can beat anybody in the room and you get into a room with guys and you start thinking nobody can whip me. So it wasn’t something you could turn on and off it was something that stayed with you all the time. As a matter of fact I remember winning the championship of the world –– I defeated Joe Frazier and I remember thinking I can beat anybody in the world, anybody, and it followed me around everywhere I would go. And that got in the way of my life because I no longer had a life; I mean I wouldn’t meet a friend, I was like I’m meeting people that I could whip, I would size you up you know, you know you can’t whip me, so you know you lose a life because 24 hours a day you are the heavyweight champion of the world in your mind.”
“The king of men” but “You lose a life. “ Wow. All in pursuit of being the biggest, toughest, meanest, strongest, richest. . . .whatever.
So, it now happens that Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have embraced this hyper–masculinity and are now in a serious pissing contest: they have actually agreed to go at each other in a “cage fight.” As Lora Kelly writes on June 27, 2023:
“Something strange is happening on Mark Zuckerberg’s Instagram. For years, he posted periodic, classic dad-and-CEO fare: anniversary shots with his wife. Photos of his kids and dog being cute. Meta product announcements.”
“In recent months, though, Zuckerberg has been posting more about fighting. Not the kind that involves firing back at critics on behalf of his oft-embattled social-media empire, but actual mixed-martial-arts training. Earlier this month, he posted a video of himself tussling with a jiujitsu champion. On Memorial Day, he posted himself in a camouflage flak vest, flushed after an intense army workout. And last week, Zuckerberg and Elon Musk said they were going to have a cage fight. The men apparently have ongoing personal tensions, and Meta is working on building a Twitter competitor. But announcing in public their intent to fight takes things to another level.”
“If you rolled your eyes at the cage-fight news: fair enough. The idea of two middle-aged executives, each facing an onslaught of business and public-image problems, literally duking it out is a bit on the nose. But the fight itself—and whether or not it happens—is less important than what it tells us about how Musk is reshaping Silicon Valley. Musk is mainstreaming new standards of behavior, and some of his peers are joining him in misguided acts of masculine aggression and populist appeals.”
“Leaders such as Musk and Zuckerberg (and, to some extent, even their less-bombastic but quite buff peer Jeff Bezos) have lately been striving to embody and project a specific flavor of masculine—and political—strength. . . .”
“The two executives’ cage-fight announcement is ‘a reflection of a really tight monoculture of Silicon Valley’s most powerful people, most of whom are men,’ Margaret O’Mara, a historian at the University of Washington who researches the tech industry, told me. In other words, the would-be participants embody the industry’s bro culture.”
“Zuckerberg’s recent interest in waging physical battles marks a departure for the CEO, who a few years ago seemed more interested in emulating someone like Bill Gates, an executive who parlayed his entrepreneurial success into philanthropy, O’Mara added. Zuckerberg has been very famous since he was quite young. His early years at the helm of his social-media empire—“I’m CEO, Bitch” business cards and all—were lightly, and sometimes ungenerously, fictionalized in The Social Network by the time he was in his mid-20s. He has consciously curated his image in the years since.”
“For a long time, Zuckerberg led Facebook as a “product guy,” focusing on the tech while letting Sheryl Sandberg lead the ads business and communications. But overlapping crises—disinformation, Cambridge Analytica, antitrust—after the 2016 election seemingly changed his approach: First, he struck a contrite tone and embarked on a listening tour in 2017.The response was not resoundingly positive. By the following summer, he had hardened his image at the company, announcing that he was gearing up to be a “wartime” leader. He has struck various stances in public over the years, but coming to blows with business rivals has not been among them—yet.”
“Musk, meanwhile, has a history of such stunts. At the onset of the war in Ukraine, he tweeted that he would like to battle Vladimir Putin in single combat, and he apparently has ongoing back pain linked to a past fight with a sumo wrestler. That Zuckerberg is playing along shows that the rules of engagement have changed.”
“Musk has incited a race to the bottom for Silicon Valley leaders. As he becomes more powerful, some other executives are quietly—and not so quietly—following his lead, cracking down on dissent, slashing jobs, and attempting to wrestle back power from employees. Even as Musk has destabilized Twitter and sparked near-constant controversy in his leadership of the platform, some peers have applauded him. He widened the scope of what CEOs could do, giving observers tacit permission to push boundaries. ‘He’s someone who’s willing to do things in public that are transgressing the rules of the game,’ O’Mara said.”
“During the first few months of Musk’s Twitter reign, few executives were willing to praise him on the record—though Reed Hastings, then a co-CEO of Netflix, did call Musk “the bravest, most creative person on the planet” in November. A few months later, Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, told Insider that executives around Silicon Valley have been asking, “Do they need to unleash their own Elon within them?” The Washington Post reported this past Saturday that Zuckerberg was undergoing an “Elonization” as he attempts to appeal to Musk’s base, the proposed cage fight being the latest event in his rebrand. (Facebook declined to comment. A request for comment to Twitter’s press email was returned with a poop emoji auto-responder.)”
“Whether or when the cage match will actually happen is unclear. Musk’s mother, for her part, has lobbied against it. But whether Zuckerberg unleashes his ‘inner Elon’ in a cage or not, both men are seeking to grab attention distinct from their business woes—and succeeding.
The tech industry has long offered wide latitude to bosses, especially male founders. Musk didn’t invent the idea of acting out in public. But he has continued to move the goalposts for all of his peers.”
“In a video posted on Twitter last week, Dana White, the president of Ultimate Fighting Championship, told TMZ that he had spoken with both men and that they were “absolutely dead serious” about fighting. He added something that I believe gets to the heart of the matter: ‘Everybody would want to see it.’”
I, for one, will refuse to watch. It would be perfectly legal to do so, just like it’s perfectly legal for Musk and Zuck to go at it in a cage fight. But, for goodness’ sake, my “fellow Americans” (as LBJ used to say): why do we keep encouraging celebrity nonsense? “Misguided acts of masculine aggression and populist appeals” (Lora Kelly‘s choice words) says it all. This country has given far too much attention to celebrities, and too much credit to the swaggering dominant male energy that wants to take on all comers. At the same time, we pay too little attention to the daily heroics of good men who stay humble, work hard, and practice random acts of kindness and caring, and not nearly enough attention to the ethically questionable things that Musk and Zuckerberg have been doing right before our eyes. Proof? For Zuckerberg, check out
But true celebrity covers up serious ethical flaws, and both Musk and Zuck are, let’s face it, celebrities. Political celebrities like Berlusconi in Italy, or Trump in the U.S. are just as flawed, or even more. Here’s a sad fact: trending right now, late June 2023 on You Tube is Bobby Kennedy Jr. doing pushups and bench presses, featuring chiseled pecs, nice abs, and looking super fit for a 69 year old. This is getting millions of views. Too many people in this country would vote for a vaccine conspiracy theorist if he’s got a famous name and the right “look” ––the alpha male who “alone” can fix it –– instead of any sober-minded public servant who takes facts seriously and actually cares about the public good.
Politically, and in business, it looks like America is getting exactly what it deserves: celebrity antics rather than thoughtful innovations in products and policy that further the public good. Meanwhile, to borrow a metaphor from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the democracy “doomsday clock” ticks ever closer to midnight.
