Mark Zuckerberg is done apologizing.
In September, the Meta CEO told the hosts of the “Acquired” podcast in front of a packed live audience at San Francisco’s Chase Center that he regrets taking responsibility in the past for issues out of his company’s control.
What might his vague comments refer to? Perhaps the Cambridge Analytica disaster of 2016, which gave Donald Trump an influential advantage on the back of Facebook user data? Or was it the platform’s dangerous proliferation of misinformation at the height of COVID in 2020? Both of these events were brought to light by in-depth reporting that harmed Zuckerberg’s reputation and made all that apologizing necessary to get back into the public’s good graces.
Today, freshly rehabbed with a Roman haircut and a cultivated wardrobe, Zuckerberg is stirring up new issues: Meta has removed Trump’s social media account restrictions, and the Meta CEO says he’ll push back on any pressure to get his platforms to take down potentially disruptive content. But who’s going to make him say sorry now?
It’s no secret that Meta, Google and other big tech giants have gutted the media industry; Google is currently facing an antitrust lawsuit for stealing millions in revenue from publications. Even just in the last few years, the critical pressure on public figures that journalism once provided has weakened to a light touch due to dwindling resources.
As an experienced communications professional for tech and other industries, what I’m seeing concerns me deeply. We’re quickly approaching a future where tech executives can spin stories and no newspapers exist anymore to provide an accurately fact-checked counter-narrative. Corporate whistleblowers won’t have any reporters to turn to. Consumers will never find out the truth. The most powerful voices will define right and wrong, and Zuckerberg and others like him won’t ever have to apologize again.
On second thought, maybe that future is already here.
An appearance like Zuckerberg’s at the Chase Center is part of a shiny new communication strategy for tech executives called “going direct.” The approach, coined by former Activision comms executive Lulu Cheng Meservey, is defined by a disregard for traditional media and its past influence on public perception. “There’s no longer a need to go through traditional gatekeepers of information and brokers of reputation,” Meservey’s manifesto declares.
In many ways, she’s correct. A decade ago, Zuckerberg would’ve taken his new messaging to a reputable reporter at a major newspaper to ensure that his story carried the weight of the outlet’s reputation into the homes of the outlet’s audience. Today, readership across all but the biggest journalistic institutions is way down, and even worse, so is public trust in them. Americans are getting their news from X, TikTok, and yes, Facebook. The market for podcasts like Acquired is exploding — it’s already a $25 billion industry — but the fact-checking and deep unbiased reporting that has historically been a requirement for traditional journalism hasn’t followed into these mediums.
Venture capital firms, tech companies and consultancies have built their own soapboxes too. Coinbase announced its controversial 2020 company policy to ban politics via its blog. Google CEO Sundar Pichai put out his own euphemistic “mission-first” policy on the company blog this year. LinkedIn has become a sea of CEO statements and product announcements from tech companies big and small. There are an almost uncountable number of platforms for the powerful to shout from.
It is no wonder Zuckerberg showed up on a stage. “Build your own platform, build your own audience, and build your own narrative” is the new way forward, according to the “Go Direct” playbook.
More voices isn’t necessarily the problem, although the ever-expanding sea of content makes discerning truth from fiction even harder. It’s the lack of accountability. Many of these platforms pride themselves on only lightly moderating content, if at all; fact-checks are few and far between.
Without independent institutions outside of the tech industry that can push back against false statements, take the time and resources required to investigate wrongdoing, carefully steward and publish whistleblower stories, and then hold the powerful to account — leading beyond apologies to new, more ethical behavior — we’re doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past with far more dangerous results.
Without independent journalism, Theranos would have continued to peddle fraudulent healthcare, Juul would have continued to sell tobacco to kids, and maybe Zuckerberg wouldn’t have felt pressured to pull all that COVID misinformation from Facebook before it caused more harm.
In today’s world, where AI is being used as an excuse to lay off thousands of workers and the most powerful in tech are pouring millions into lobbying before a history-making election, the stakes for tech accountability could not be higher. If these current trends persist unchecked, we’re facing a future where the Zuckerbergs of the world will do whatever they like and tell us what to think about it too. Accountability will be dead, no more sorrys about it.
William Fitzgerald is the founder and a partner at The Worker Agency, a policy and communications firm based in the Bay Area. Before setting up the firm, he worked on the public policy & corporate communications teams at Google, from 2008-2018.