Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg leaves a meeting with Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) in his office on Capitol Hill on September 19, 2019 in Washington, DC. Zuckerberg is making the rounds with various lawmakers in Washington today.
Samuel Corum | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday hosted a surprise publicly live streamed Q&A session with his employees after recordings from a similar meeting in July were leaked and published earlier this week.
Zuckerberg addressed a range of topics, including commentary from Democratic presidential candidates Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, which types of fake news Facebook tries to prevent and how the San Francisco Bay Area’s housing crisis is impacting the company.
Zuckerberg said in a post announcing the surprise Q&A session that he thought “it would be good to show everyone what these Q&As are like.”
“At this point I do such a bad job at interviews that what do we have to lose,” Zuckerberg said during the live stream.
Asked his response to Sanders’ comment that billionaires should not exist, Zuckerberg responded “at some level, no one deserves to have that much money.”
“Is it fair that a group of wealthy people get to choose which science projects get worked on? I don’t know,” Zuckerberg said. “At some level it’s not fair, but it may be optimal or better than the alternative.”
Asked by a Facebook employee how he plans to stay impartial to comments by Warren about the social network, Zuckerberg joked “let’s try not to antagonize her further.” He reiterated that he thought that Warren’s pledge to break up Facebook meant she’d probably at least try to do so if she’s elected, and vowed again to fight it.
Zuckerberg also said that more than 80% of the people using the company’s new Facebook Dating service come back week-over-week, but he declined to share a precise number of users because the Q&A was being broadcast.
Asked about how Facebook prioritizes between the various types of false information that is shared on its social networks, Zuckerberg said that the company’s top priority is to prevent “complete and obvious hoaxes.”
“When we talk about misinformation a lot of people focus on a statement that isn’t clear if it’s a shade of true or partially false. Theres a lot of stuff that people say that is completely false,” Zuckerberg said. “That’s the thing that I’m really focused on and making sure that we [stop]. At the same time on top, I don’t generally think that people want to live in a world where tech companies get to decide what is true and what isn’t.”
Facebook is now primarily growing its workforce through new employees outside of the company’s presence in the San Francisco Bay Area, Zuckerberg said.
“The housing prices are way up, the traffic is bad. There’s a lot that we are trying to do to help build more housing and alleviate traffic constraints, but for the near term it’s going to be building up those other hubs,” Zuckerberg said.
The Verge on Tuesday published audio and transcripts from similar Q&A sessions on Tuesday. In his speech Thursday, Zuckerberg said he stood by all the content in the leaked recording.
In that earlier audio recording published earlier this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg blasted Warren’s plan to break up the company. He also explains why he refused to testify in front of various governments around the world and lays out his plan to squash TikTok, an upstart social media app.
During the live stream on Thursday, Zuckerberg said “we think it was an intern” who leaked the previous recording “because it was an intern Q&A.”
— This story is developing, check back for updates.
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