5/22/22, 6:36 PM Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s future, fake news, and Russian mischief - Vox Javier Zarracina/Vox; NurPhoto via Getty Images Ezra Klein I think if you go back a couple years in technology rhetoric, a lot of the slogans people had that were read optimistically have come to take on darker connotations too. The idea that “anything is possible.” Our sense of what “anything” means there has become wider. Or the idea that you want to make the world more open and connected — I think it’s become clearer that an open and connected world could be a better world or it could be a worse world. So, when you think about the 20-year time frame, what will you be looking for to see if Facebook succeeded, if it actually made the world a better place? Mark Zuckerberg Well, I don’t think it’s going to take 20 years. I think the basic point that you’re getting at is that we’re really idealistic. When we started, we thought about how good it would be if people could connect, if everyone had a voice. Frankly, we didn’t spend enough time investing in, or thinking through, some of the downside uses of the tools. So for the first 10 years of the company, everyone was just focused on the positive. I think now people are appropriately focused on some of the risks and downsides as well. And I think we were too slow in investing enough in that. It’s not like we did nothing. I mean, at the beginning of last year, I think we had 10,000 people working on security. But by the end of this year, we’re going to have 20,000 people working on security. In terms of resolving a lot of these issues, I think it’s just a case where because we didn’t invest enough, I think we will dig through this hole, but it will take a few years. I wish I could solve all these issues in three months or six months, but I just think the reality is that solving some of these questions is just going to take a longer period of time. Now, the good news there is that we really started investing more, at least a year ago. So if it’s going to be a three-year process, then I think we’re about a year in already. And hopefully, by the end of this year, we’ll have really started to turn the corner on some of these issues. https://www.vox.com/2018/4/2/17185052/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-interview-fake-news-bots-cambridge 14/16