Behind the Scenes of Mark Zuckerberg’s Manifesto (Backchannel)

Steven Levy on Mark Zuckerberg's Building Global Community "manifesto;" also see Kara Swisher's I talked to Mark Zuckerberg about his manifesto on the future of Facebook (and the rest of us) (Recode)

"Because this message unrolls more like a State of the Union address than your typical Facebook post, it will undoubtedly fuel speculation that young Zuckerberg may be positioning himself to run for public office. (By the way, he turns 35 — the minimum age for the US president — in 2019.) But why accept what might well be a demotion? It’s true that one could dismiss Facebook as a global power with Stalin’s line to Churchill: “How many divisions does the Pope have?” But Facebook has a foreign policy —in the last year alone Zuckerberg has met with dozens of world leaders, including the Pope. And Facebook’s algorithms determine what information we see and who gets to share our news with us, and the majority of its 1.8 billion users show their support for it — in essence, they vote for it — by using the service every day.
Nonetheless, you might consider Zuckerberg’s post a counterpoint to the dark inauguration speech we recently witnessed. Unlike the one in D.C., Zuckerberg’s has specifics—it outlines a collaborative effort, with Facebook taking the initiative, to build a global set of meaningful communities with five purposes: support, safety, trusted and open information, civic engagement, and inclusion."

Behind the Scenes of Mark Zuckerberg’s Manifesto