Mark Zuckerberg: Meta, Facebook, Instagram, and the Metaverse | Lex Fridman Podcast #267

Let's talk about free speech and censorship.

You don't build a company like this unless you believe that people expressing themselves is a good thing.

Let me ask you as a father, does it weigh heavy on you that people get bullied on social networks?

I care a lot about how people feel when they use our products, and I don't want to build products that make people angry.

Why do you think so many people dislike you? Some even hate you. And how do you regain their trust and support? The following is a conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, now called Meta. Please allow me to say a few words about this conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, about social media, and about what troubles me in the world today and what gives me hope. If this is not interesting to you, I understand. Please skip. I believe that at its best, social media puts a mirror to humanity and reveals the full complexity of our world, shining a light on the dark aspects of human nature and giving us hope, a way out through compassionate but tense chaos of conversation that eventually can turn into understanding, friendship, and even love. But this is not simple. Our world is not simple. It is full of human suffering. I think about the hundreds of millions of people who are starving and who live in extreme poverty, the one million people who take their own life every year, the 20 million people that attempt it, and the many, many more millions who suffer quietly in ways that numbers could never know. I'm troubled by the cruelty and pain of war. Today, my heart goes out to the people of Ukraine. My grandfather spilled his blood on this land, held the line as a machine gunner against the Nazi invasion, surviving impossible odds. I am nothing without him. His blood runs in my blood. My words are useless here. I send my love. It's all I have. I hope to travel to Russia and Ukraine soon. I will speak to citizens and leaders, including Vladimir Putin. As I've said in the past, I don't care about access, fame, money, or power, and I'm afraid of nothing. But I am who I am, and my goal in conversation is to understand the human being before me, no matter who they are, no matter their position. And I do believe the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man. So this is it. This is our world. It is full of hate, violence, and destruction. But it is also full of love, beauty, and the insatiable desire to help each other. The people who run the social networks that show this world, that show us to ourselves have the greatest of responsibilities. In a time of war, pandemic, atrocity, we turn to social networks to share real human insights and experiences, to organize protests and celebrations, to learn and to challenge our understanding of the world, of our history, and of our future. And above all, to be reminded of our common humanity. When social networks fail, they have the power to cause immense suffering, and when they succeed, they have the power to lessen that suffering. This is hard. It's a responsibility perhaps almost unlike any other in history. This podcast conversation attempts to understand the man and the company who take this responsibility on, where they fail and where they hope to succeed. Mark Zuckerberg's feet are often held to the fire, as they should be, and this actually gives me hope. The power of innovation and engineering coupled with the freedom of speech in the form of its highest ideal I believe can solve any problem in the world. But that's just it. Both are necessary, the engineer and the critic. I believe that criticism is essential, but cynicism is not. And I worry that in our public discourse, cynicism too easily masquerades as wisdom, as truth, becomes viral and takes over, and worse, suffocates the dreams of young minds who want to build solutions to the problems of the world. We need to inspire those young minds. At least for me, they give me hope. And one small way I'm trying to contribute is to have honest conversations like these that don't just ride the viral wave of cynicism but seek to understand the failures and successes of the past, the problems before us, and the possible solutions in this very complicated world of ours. I'm sure I will fail often, and I count on the critic to point it out when I do. But I ask for one thing, and that is to fuel the fire of optimism, especially in those who dream to build solutions, because without that, we don't have a chance on this too fragile, tiny planet of ours. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Mark Zuckerberg. Can you circle all the traffic lights, please? (paper rustling) You actually did it. That is very impressive performance. Okay, now we can initiate the interview procedure. Is it possible that this conversation is happening inside a metaverse created by you, by Meta, many years from now and we're doing a memory replay experience?