Born on May 14, 1984, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American businessman who is credited with co-founding the social networking site Facebook as well as its parent company, Meta Platforms. He now serves as the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling shareholder of Meta Platforms. Multiple lawsuits have been filed against Zuckerberg, alleging that he was responsible for the design and ownership of the website, as well as for concerns concerning the privacy of online users.
Mark Zuckerberg attended Harvard College for a short period of time. It was during his time there that he and his roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes started Facebook in February of 2004. It was in May of 2012 that Zuckerberg took the firm public with the majority of the shares. He achieved the distinction of being the youngest self-made billionaire in the world in 2008, when he was just 23 years old, and he has continuously ranked among the wealthiest persons in the world. According to Forbes, Zuckerberg's net worth is expected to be $237 billion as of January 2025 using this estimation.
In addition, Zuckerberg has directed his wealth toward the organization of a number of charitable contributions, one of which being the founding of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. For its depiction of Zuckerberg's early career, legal issues, and first success with Facebook, the film The Social Network, which was released in 2010 and won numerous Academy Awards, was a significant achievement. Because of his notoriety and rapid growth in the technological business, he has garnered the attention of both the political and legal communities.
Early years of life ==
White Plains, New York was the location where Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984. His parents, Karen (née Kempner), a psychiatrist, and Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist, were his parents. In the town of Dobbs Ferry, New York, he and his three sisters, Gabrielle, Randi, and Donna, were brought up in a Jewish home that adhered to the Reform movement. Their great-grandparents came from Austria, Germany, and Poland, and they immigrated to the United States. Initially, Zuckerberg was a student at Ardsley High School; however, he later transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy. When it came to fencing, he was the team leader.
Software development is a growing field.
When Zuckerberg was a youngster, he developed his skills in computer programming. He developed a software called "ZuckNet" when he was around eleven years old. This application enabled computers at his family's residence and at his father's dentistry practice to effectively connect with one another. When Zuckerberg was still in high school, he worked on developing a music player that he termed the Synapse Media Player. Machine learning was utilized by the gadget in order to understand the listening habits of the user. This information was published on Slashdot and obtained a rating of three out of five stars from PC Magazine. There was a time when the New Yorker remarked of Zuckerberg, "Some kids played computer games. Mark created them." When he was still in high school, he attended Mercy College and took a graduate computer course on Thursday evenings.
During the years spent in college
According to an article published in The New Yorker, Zuckerberg had already established a "reputation as a programming prodigy" by the time he started attending Harvard University class in the year 2002. The individual in question was a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi, a resident of Kirkland House, and a student of both computer science and psychology. During his second year of school, he developed a tool that he dubbed CourseMatch. This program enabled users to pick classes based on the preferences of other students and assisted them in forming study groups. Later on, he developed a separate software that he first referred to as Facemash. This tool gave pupils the opportunity to choose the most attractive individual from a selection of photographs. Zuckerberg's roommate at the time, Arie Hasit, provided the following explanation:
"Face Books" were books that contained the names and photographs of all of the people who resided in the student dorms. These books were always available to us. Initially, he constructed a website and positioned two photos, which may be interpreted as depicting two males and two girls. All of the people who visited the website were required to vote on who they thought was "hotter," and the results of those votes would be ranked.
The website was launched over the course of the weekend; however, by Monday am, the college had taken it down. This was due to the fact that the site's popularity had caused one of Harvard's network switches to become overburdened, which prevented students from accessing the Internet. It was also brought to the attention of a great number of pupils that their photographs were being used without their permission. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg issued a public apology, and the student newspaper published pieces declaring that his website was "completely unlawful."
This is a career.
For example, Facebook
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg started coding code for a new website in January of 2004. In collaboration with his roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, Mark Zuckerberg developed "Thefacebook" on February 4, 2004, with the website's original address being thefacebook.com. It is possible that Phillips Exeter Academy, the preparatory school from which Zuckerberg graduated in 2002, was the source of an earlier generation of inspiration for Facebook. "The Photo Address Book" was the name of the student directory that was issued by the organization. Students referred to it as "The Facebook." A significant number of private schools included picture directories of this kind as an integral component of the social experience of their students. Students were allowed to include characteristics such as their class years, their acquaintances, and their telephone numbers with the use of these identification cards.
Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, three Harvard seniors, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing that he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com. However, he was using their ideas to build a competing product. This accusation was made six days after the launch of the website. After receiving complaints from the three individuals, The Harvard Crimson initiated an inquiry as a reaction to the complaints. While Zuckerberg was attempting to persuade the editors not to publish the article, he also broke into two of the editors' email accounts. In order to do so, he utilized the private login data logs that were provided by TheFacebook.
Following the formal debut of the social media network Facebook, the three individuals launched a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, which ultimately ended in a settlement being reached. 1.2 million Facebook shares and twenty million dollars in cash were the terms of the settlement that was agreed upon.
Zuckerberg's Facebook was initially only a "Harvard thing" until he made the decision to expand it to other colleges. He enlisted the assistance of Dustin Moskovitz, who was also a co-founder of Facebook and was his roommate. Columbia University, New York University, Stanford University, Dartmouth College, Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, and Yale University were the first universities to join the group.
When Zuckerberg was in his second year at Harvard, he decided to withdraw from the university in order to finish the project. Zuckerberg, Moskovitz, and the other co-founders relocated to Palo Alto, California, where they rented a modest home that doubled as an office space for the company. An investment in Zuckerberg's startup was made by Peter Thiel, whom Zuckerberg met over the summer. In the middle of 2004, they was given their first office. According to Zuckerberg, the group had intended to go back to Harvard, but in the end, they chose to stay in California. This was because Zuckerberg admired the "mythical place" of Silicon Valley, which is the heart of computer technology in the state of California. Major firms had already made bids to purchase the company, but they had declined those offers. In an interview in 2007, Zuckerberg explained his reasoning: "It's not because of the amount of money. For me and my colleagues, the most important thing is that we create an open information flow for people. Having media corporations owned by conglomerates is just not an attractive idea to me." The same year, speaking at Y Combinator's Startup School course at Stanford University, Zuckerberg made a controversial assertion that "young people are just smarter" and that other entrepreneurs should bias towards hiring young people.
In an interview with Wired magazine in 2010, Zuckerberg reiterated these objectives, saying, "The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open." Earlier, in April 2009, Zuckerberg had sought the opinion of Peter Currie, who had previously served as the chief financial officer of Netscape, exploring alternative funding techniques for Facebook. Facebook had hit the milestone of 500 million users, according to a report that was released by Zuckerberg on July 21, 2010. In response to the question of whether Facebook might bring in more money from advertising as a result of its spectacular growth, he provided the following explanation:
I suppose that they could... When compared to the typical search query, the amount of space that is occupied by advertisements on our website is significantly higher. For us, the average is a little less than ten percent of the sites, and the average for search is almost twenty percent of the pages that are given up to advertisements... That is the most straightforward alternative we have. However, that is not how we roll. The amount of money we make is plenty. We are expanding at the rate that we want to grow at, which is to say that we are keeping things operating smoothly.
Zuckerberg "clearly thinks of himself as a hacker," according to a statement made by Steven Levy in 2010, who was the author of the book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which was published in 1984. That "it's OK to break things" "to make them better" is something that Zuckerberg has said. An initiative known as "hackathons" was implemented by Facebook. These events were conducted every six to eight weeks, and participants were given a single night to come up with and finish a project. During the hackathons, the firm provided attendees with music, food, and alcohol, and a significant number of Facebook employees, including Zuckerberg, typically contributed to the event. Zuckerberg had a conversation with Levy in which he stated, "The idea is that you can build something really good in a night." "And that's part of the personality of Facebook now ... It's definitely very core to my personality."
Zuckerberg was included on the TR35 list published by MIT Technology Review in 2007, which recognized him as one of the top 35 innovators in the world who were under the age of 35. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was ranked number one on the list of the Top 100 "most influential people of the Information Age" published by Vanity Fair magazine in 2010. When the Vanity Fair 100 list was compiled in 2009, Zuckerberg was placed number 23. The New Statesman conducted an annual assessment of the world's 50 most important persons in 2010, and Zuckerberg was selected as the sixteenth most influential personality.
Mark Zuckerberg stated in an interview with Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in 2011, shortly after the passing of Steve Jobs, that Jobs had provided him with guidance on how to establish a management team at Facebook that was "focused on building as high quality and good things as you currently are."
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Dmitry Medvedev, who was serving as Prime Minister of Russia at the time, in Moscow on October 1, 2012, with the goal of fostering social media innovation in Russia and enhancing Facebook's position in the Russian market. A tweet from Russia's Minister of Communications stated that Medvedev was successful in convincing Zuckerberg to establish a research center in Moscow rather than attempting to get Russian programmers to leave the company. There were around 9 million users of Facebook in Russia in the year 2012, while the domestic clone VK had over 34 million members. The head of consumer marketing at Facebook, Rebecca Van Dyck, stated that on April 6, 2013, 85 million Facebook users in the United States were exposed to the first day of the Home promotional campaign.
An unemployed web engineer was responsible for hacking into Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page, according to a claim that was published in The Washington Post on August 19, 2013.
During the TechCrunch Disrupt conference that took place in September 2013, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that he was working toward the goal of enrolling on Facebook the five billion individuals who did not have access to the Internet at the time of the conference. After that, Zuckerberg went on to explain that this is relevant to the objective of the Internet.org initiative, which is for Facebook, together with the assistance of other technological firms, to expand the number of people who are connected to the internet.
The Mobile World Congress (MWC) was held in Barcelona, Spain, in March of 2014, and it was attended by 75,000 people. The keynote speaker of the MWC was Mark Zuckerberg. There was a relationship between Facebook's emphasis on mobile technology and Zuckerberg's speech, which stated that mobile represented the future of the firm. This connection was noted by a number of different media outlets. Zuckerberg's lecture elaborates on the objective that he presented at the TechCrunch conference in September 2013, which is to broaden Internet access to include nations that are still in the process of constructing their internet infrastructure.
At the offices of Facebook on December 8, 2014, Zuckerberg received visiting Chinese politician Lu Wei, who is regarded as the "Internet czar" due to his influence in the implementation of China's online policies. Other American technological giants such as Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook were also present at the event. The meeting took place after Zuckerberg took part in a question and answer session at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, on October 23, 2014. During the session, he conversed in Mandarin Chinese. Despite the fact that Facebook is prohibited in China, Zuckerberg is highly regarded among the Chinese people. He was at the university to assist in fostering the growth of the nation's burgeoning entrepreneur sector.
At the company's headquarters in Menlo Park on December 11, 2014, Zuckerberg participated in a live question and answer session, during which he received questions. Through his participation in a public session, the creator and CEO of Facebook indicated that he does not consider Facebook to be a waste of time because it makes it easier for people to interact with one another. He also stated that he was interested in "learning how to better serve the community."
A one dollar wage is what Zuckerberg earns for his role as CEO of Facebook. Due to the fact that he and his wife "pledged to give away 99% of their wealth, which was then estimated to be $55.0 billion," Business Insider named Zuckerberg one of the "Top 10 Business Visionaries Creating Value for the World" in June of 2016. Other individuals on the list were Elon Musk and Sal Khan.
Following his commencement address on the 25th of May, 2017, Zuckerberg was presented with an honorary degree from Harvard University. This occurred on the occasion of the 366th commencement day.
An end-to-end encrypted system was planned to be integrated for three main social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, according to proposals that were given forth by Zuckerberg in January of 2019. Facebook integrated the chat systems for Instagram and Messenger on both iOS and Android smartphones on August 14, 2020. This integration occurs on both platforms. Users of Instagram and Facebook were urged to communicate with one another through the version upgrade.
There are many more initiatives.
An additional campus-only site called i2hub, which was developed by Wayne Chang and centered on peer-to-peer file sharing, was introduced one month after Facebook was initially introduced by Mark Zuckerberg in February of 2004. Both i2hub and Facebook were garnering the attention of the press at the time, and both were experiencing significant growth in terms of the number of users and publicity. Wirehog was a competitive peer-to-peer file sharing service that was created in August of 2004 by Zuckerberg, Andrew McCollum, Adam D'Angelo, and Sean Parker. It was a predecessor to the apps that were introduced on the Facebook Platform in 2007.
For the purpose of providing Internet access to the five billion people who did not have it as of the launch date, Zuckerberg founded Internet.org in 2013. He defined it as an endeavor to give Internet access. The initiative encountered strong resistance in India, where campaigners argued that its limited internet ran counter to the idea of net neutrality. In response, Zuckerberg stated that a limited internet was preferable than having no internet at all. In February of 2016, Internet.org was taken offline in India; nevertheless, Zuckerberg later visited with Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, to discuss additional opportunities.
In 2016, Zuckerberg, along with Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking, established the solar sail spacecraft development project known as Breakthrough Starshot. Presently, Zuckerberg serves as a board member for the project.
cases brought against ConnectU ===
Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, all of whom were students at Harvard, have lodged allegations against Mark Zuckerberg, claiming that he willfully misled them into believing that he would assist them in constructing a social network that they would eventually refer to as ConnectU. In 2004, they initiated legal action, but on March 28, 2007, it was thrown out due to a defect in the documents. Almost immediately after that, it was resubmitted to a federal court in Boston. Regarding Social Butterfly, a project that was released by The Winklevoss Chang Group, Facebook filed a countersuit. Social Butterfly is a project that is allegedly a cooperation between ConnectU and i2hub. Following the conclusion of the litigation on June 25, 2008, Facebook reached an agreement to transfer more than 1.2 million common shares and make a cash payment of $20 million.
During the month of November in 2007, private court records were published on the website of 02138, a publication that marketed to Harvard graduates. They contained information such as Zuckerberg's Social Security number, the address of his parents' residence, and the address of his fiancée. Despite the fact that Facebook had submitted a request to have the records erased, the judge upheld the decision of 02138.
It is Eduardo Saverin who is the
Eduardo Saverin, one of the co-founders of Facebook, filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook in 2005, saying that Zuckerberg had improperly used Saverin's money for his own personal purposes. Saverin's status as co-founder of Facebook was recognized by the corporation, and Saverin promised to refrain from speaking to the press. The case was settled out of court, and although the contents of the deal were kept confidential, the company did not reveal the terms of the settlement.
Investigations of criminal activity in Pakistan ===
After a "Draw Muhammad" contest was held on Facebook in June of 2010, the then-Deputy Attorney General of Pakistan, Muhammad Azhar Sidiqque, initiated a criminal inquiry into Facebook co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, as well as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. An unidentified German lady who was responsible for creating the contest was also identified by the inquiry. In order to get Zuckerberg and the three other individuals arrested for blasphemy, Sidiqque requested that the country's police officers get in touch with Interpol. Facebook's website was momentarily prohibited in Pakistan on May 19, 2010, and it remained blocked until the end of May, when Facebook withdrew the contest from its website. The problem was also brought to the attention of the United Nations General Assembly by Sidiqque, who urged its delegate to do so.
The author is Paul Ceglia.
Paul Ceglia, the proprietor of a wood pellet fuel firm located in Allegany County, New York, filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg in June of 2010. In the lawsuit, he said that he owned 84 percent of Facebook and demanded monetary compensation. According to Ceglia, he and Zuckerberg signed a contract on April 28, 2003, which said that in exchange for an initial price of $1,000, Ceglia would be entitled to fifty percent of the money generated by the website. Additionally, Ceglia would get one percent of the business's interest, every day, beginning January 1, 2004, and continuing until the website was finished. At the time, Zuckerberg was working on a number of different projects, one of which was Facemash, which was the forerunner of Facebook. However, he did not register the domain name thefacebook.com until January 1, 2004. The administration of Facebook determined that the complaint was "completely frivolous" and dismissed it. A representative for Facebook named Barry Schnitt revealed to a reporter that Ceglia's legal team had attempted to reach an out-of-court settlement but had been unsuccessful.
Ceglia was taken into custody by federal officials on October 26, 2012, and he was charged with mail and wire fraud, as well as "tampering with, destroying, and fabricating evidence in a scheme to defraud the founder of Facebook of billions of dollars." According to the allegations, Ceglia fabricated emails in order to give the impression that he and Zuckerberg discussed specifics on an early version of Facebook. However, when the emails were examined by the investigators, they discovered that there was no mention of Facebook in any of the emails. Other law firms withdrew from the lawsuit once Ceglia was arrested, while others withdrew from the case before it was even started.
The ownership of land in Hawaii === Hawaii
In the year 2014, Mark Zuckerberg made a purchase of seven hundred acres of land on the island of Kaua in Hawaii.i.e. In January of 2017, Zuckerberg filed eight lawsuits using the legal doctrine of "quiet title and partition" against hundreds of native Hawaiians in order to assert ownership over small parcels of property that were located inside his extensive estate. Through a post on Facebook, Zuckerberg addressed the charges that were leveled against him, stating that the lawsuits were an honest attempt to compensate the partial owners of the land for their "fair share." Subsequent to his discovery that the legislation governing land ownership in Hawaii is distinct from those of the other 49 states, he decided to withdraw the litigation. After moving forward, Zuckerberg expressed his sorrow that he had not taken the time to fully comprehend the procedure and its background before moving forward.
=== Testimony before U.S. What is Congress?
Zuckerberg gave testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on April 10 and 11, 2018, detailing the use of personal data by Facebook in relation to the data scandal that occurred between Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. In his statement, he referred to the entire situation as a violation of trust between Aleksandr Kogan, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook. Zuckerberg did not comply with the demands made to him to testify before a parliamentary committee in the United Kingdom and provide testimony about the topic.
It was unanimously decided by the United States Senate Commerce Committee on October 1, 2020, to send subpoenas to the chief executive officers of three of the most prominent technology companies, including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Sundar Pichai, and Twitter's Jack Dorsey. Under Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, the subpoenas were issued with the intention of compelling the chief executive officers to testify regarding the legal immunity that the statute provides to technology platforms. Republican lawmakers in the United States complained that the bill provided social media corporations with an excessive level of protection from claims of anti-conservative repression.
On March 25, 2021, Zuckerberg gave a testimony in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on the role that Facebook plays in the dissemination of hate speech and false information on the site. His responses to questions on Facebook's management of user data, its part in the attack on the United States Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, and its attempts to combat misinformation and hate speech were among those that were asked of him throughout the hearing. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the firm has a duty to address these concerns and provided an overview of the efforts that the company is doing to enhance its policies and procedures. The hearing was a component of a larger attempt by Congress to make technology corporations accountable for the role they play in molding public debate and preserving the privacy of their users.
During a hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee in January 2024 on the topic of child safety and social media platforms, Zuckerberg and other CEOs of technology businesses were questioned about the policies and procedures of their respective companies. During the course of the hearing, he expressed his regret to the families of children who had been subjected to abuse and injury on the internet.
Meta's proposition is as follows:
In the materials filed with the court, it is stated that Zuckerberg specifically rejected Meta's suggestions to promote the mental health of adolescents. As was shown in a lawsuit that is still continuing, he persistently fought efforts to improve well-being on Facebook and Instagram, even to the point of overriding top officials such as Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, and Nick Clegg, the president of Global Affairs. The internal messages that were published in the civil case that was brought by Massachusetts illustrate Zuckerberg's unwillingness to better safeguard over 30 million teenagers who use Instagram in the United States. This highlights his considerable influence on Meta's choices that effect billions of users. These documents also give insight on the periodic disputes that have arisen between Zuckerberg and other Meta executives who advocate for increased user well-being that have occurred.
Depictions in many forms of media
The Social Network is a social networking site.
Jesse Eisenberg played the role of Mark Zuckerberg in the film The Social Network, which was released on October 1, 2010. The film is based on Zuckerberg and the years that occurred during the formation of Facebook. The response that Zuckerberg gave when he was informed about the film was, "I just wished that nobody made a movie of me while I was still alive." Additionally, after the script for the film was leaked on the internet and it became clear that the film would not portray Zuckerberg in a completely positive light, he stated that he wanted to establish himself as a "good guy." Ben Mezrich's book, The Accidental Billionaires, serves as the inspiration for the film. The book's marketing previously referred to the book as "big juicy fun" rather than "reportage." Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter for the movie, stated in an interview with New York magazine, "I don't want my fidelity to be the truth; I want it to be storytelling." He went on to ask, "What is the big deal about accuracy purely for the sake of accuracy, and can we not have the true be the enemy of the good?"
On the day that the film was awarded the Golden Globe for Best Picture, which was on January 16, 2011, producer Scott Rudin expressed his gratitude to Facebook and Zuckerberg "for his willingness to allow us to use his life and work as a metaphor through which to tell a story about communication and the way that we relate to each other." Some of the impressions that were presented in Sorkin's writing were withdrawn after he was awarded the prize for Best Screenplay.
One thing I wanted to mention to Mark Zuckerberg tonight is that if you are watching the movie, the character played by Rooney Mara makes a prediction right at the opening of the film. It was her mistake. You surprised everyone by becoming an outstanding businessperson, a visionary, and an extraordinary philanthropist.
During the month of January 2011, Zuckerberg made an unexpected appearance as a guest on Saturday Night Live, which was hosted by Jesse Eisenberg. It was the first time that they had ever met, according to both of them. Zuckerberg, who had previously expressed disapproval of the way he was portrayed in the film, was questioned by Eisenberg on his thoughts on the film. Eisenberg noted that he was "nervous to meet him, because I had spent now, a year and a half thinking about him..." in a subsequent interview about their meeting. Zuckerberg responded by saying, "It was interesting." Eisenberg elaborated on his feelings on their encounter. He concluded by saying, "Mark has been so gracious about something that's really so uncomfortable ... The fact that he would do SNL and make fun of the situation is so sweet and so generous. It's the best possible way to handle something that, I think, could otherwise be very uncomfortable."
Inaccuracy that has been contested ====
David Kirkpatrick, a former technology editor at Fortune magazine and author of The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World (2011), states that "the film is only forty percent true... he is not snide and sarcastic in a cruel way, the way that Zuckerberg is played in the movie." Kirkpatrick also points out that "a lot of the factual incidents are accurate, but many are distorted and the overall impression is false." Kirkpatrick comes to the conclusion that "his motivations were primarily to try and come up with a new way to share information on the Internet."
Despite the fact that the movie depicted Zuckerberg's invention of Facebook as a means of elevating his status after he was not accepted into any of the top final clubs at Harvard, Zuckerberg himself indicated that he had no interest in joining the clubs. "False" is the word that Kirkpatrick used to describe the impression that the movie gives. A former senior programmer at Facebook named Karel Baloun made the observation that the "image of Zuckerberg as a socially inept nerd is overstated... It is fiction..." The statement made in the movie that he "would deliberately betray a friend" was also disregarded by him.
There are many other representations.
On the episode of The Simpsons titled "Loan-a-Lia," which was shown for the first time on October 3, 2010, Zuckerberg provided his own voice for the character. After attending a convention for business owners, Lisa Simpson and her buddy Nelson had a chance encounter with Mark Zuckerberg in the episode. Lisa is informed by Zuckerberg that she does not need to complete her education in order to achieve extraordinary success. He uses the examples of Bill Gates and Richard Branson to illustrate this point. On Saturday Night Live, which aired on October 9, 2010, a parody of Zuckerberg and Facebook was performed. Andy Samberg was the actor that played the part of Marc Zuckerberg. It was said that Zuckerberg himself did not take offense to the situation, saying, "I thought this was funny."
At the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, which took place on October 30, 2010, Stephen Colbert presented Mark Zuckerberg with a "Medal of Fear" "because he values his privacy much more than he values yours." The documentary film Terms & Conditions May Apply, which was released in 2013, featured Zuckerberg at the film's finale. "Franchise Prequel" was the episode of South Park that made fun of him. When he was portrayed, he was described as "a rosy-cheeked bully nerd who utters strange noises, makes peculiar kung fu gestures, and turns up wherever he likes in people's houses," as stated by CNET.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Donations Are Both Important
The foundation known as Startup:Education was established by Zuckerberg. In September of 2010, it was revealed that he had given a donation of one hundred million dollars to Newark Public Schools, which is the public school system in the city of Newark, New Jersey. They pointed out that the time of the gift was close to the release of The Social Network, which gave a fairly unflattering portrayal of Zuckerberg. Critics pointed out that this was a coincidence. Zuckerberg responded to the criticism, saying, "The thing that I was most sensitive about with the movie timing was, I didn't want the press about The Social Network movie to get conflated with the Newark project. I was thinking about doing this anonymously just so that the two things could be kept separate." Newark Mayor Cory Booker stated that he and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had to convince Zuckerberg's team not to make the donation anonymously. According to the journalist Dale Russakoff, the money was thrown away in a significant manner.
In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett, an investor, signed a document called The Giving Pledge. In it, they indicated that they would give away at least half of their fortune to charitable organizations over the course of time. Additionally, they extended an invitation to other affluent individuals to give away at least fifty percent of their wealth to charitable organizations. In the spirit of The Giving Pledge, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, made a public declaration in December 2012 that they would devote the bulk of their money to "advancing human potential and promoting equality" throughout the course of their whole lifetimes.
Zuckerberg made the announcement in December 2013 that he would be donating 18 million Facebook shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The contribution was scheduled to be carried out by the end of the month. According to the valuation of Facebook at the time, the shares together had a total worth of $990 million. In the latter part of that month, the donation was acknowledged as the most substantial philanthropic contribution ever recorded for that particular year. As a result of their charitable contributions totaling almost one billion dollars, Zuckerberg and his wife were ranked at the top of the annual list of the fifty most generous Americans published by the Chronicle of Philanthropy for the year 2013.
During the month of October in 2014, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife made a donation of $25 million to fight the Ebola virus sickness, more especially the outbreak of the West African infection. A total of $75 million was contributed by the couple to the establishment of San Francisco General Hospital in February of 2015. This was the largest individual contribution ever made to a public hospital in the United States. They were recognized by the hospital, which changed its name to The Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center in their dedication to the facility. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a nearly unanimous, non-binding measure in the latter part of the year 2020 that condemned the renaming. The measure cited concerns that a public hospital should not be named after an individual whose social media platform is accused of "endangering public health, spreading misinformation, and violating privacy." The pair made a commitment to donate 99% of their Facebook shares, which were valued at $45 billion at the time, to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) one day before the first of December in 2015. Rather of being transferred instantly, the cash would be distributed gradually over the course of their lives. Zuckerberg and Chan made the decision to employ the structure of a limited liability company (LLC) rather than founding a nonprofit corporation to give the value of the shares to, as other billionaires including as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and others have done. The CZI has been accused of engaging in philanthrocapitalism by a number of journalists and faculty members.
Chan Zuckerberg Biohub is a collaborative research space located in San Francisco's Mission Bay district, close to the University of California, San Francisco. In 2016, CZI donated $600 million to establish the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, which is a tax-exempt charity. The goal of the space is to encourage interaction and collaboration between scientists conducting research at Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco. The researcher's home university and Biohub would share ownership of any intellectual property that was produced as a result of their work. In contrast to charities such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which provide the general public free access to and reuse of any research that is sponsored, Biohub has preserved the ability to market any research that it finances. Creators will have the opportunity to make their findings available to the public, provided that they receive permission from Biohub. CZ Biohub mandates that its investigators and staff scientists post their submitted publications and supporting data on preprints sites like bioRxiv. This is done with the goal of expanding access to scientific research and promoting open science.
In the middle of the COVID-19 outbreak, Zuckerberg made a donation of $25 million to an accelerator that is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and is working to find therapies for the disease. In addition to this, he said that donations of $25 million would be made to local journalistic organizations that had been affected by the epidemic. Additionally, he revealed that Facebook, Inc. will spend $75 million to purchase advertisements in local newspapers in order to sell itself.
Aspects of Politics
Although Zuckerberg registered to vote in Westchester County, New York, in 2002, he did not cast a ballot until November 2008, despite the fact that he had lived there his whole life. Elma Rosas, a spokesperson for the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters, stated to Bloomberg that Zuckerberg is classified as having "no preference" on voter records, and that he has voted in at least two of the three general elections that have taken place in the previous three years, namely in 2008 and 2012.
Neither his political affiliation nor his voting history have ever been disclosed by Zuckerberg and his team. In February of 2013, Zuckerberg organized his very first fundraising event, which was for Chris Christie, who was serving as Governor of New Jersey at the time. On this specific occasion, he was particularly interested in education reform, and Christie's efforts in the field of education reform centered on the growth of charter schools and the activities of teachers unions. Towards the end of that year, Zuckerberg organized a campaign fundraiser for Cory Booker, who was running for the New Jersey special Senate election in 2013. Booker was the mayor of Newark who was running at the time. Through the assistance of Governor Chris Christie, Booker was able to get a commitment of one hundred million dollars from Zuckerberg to be given to Newark Public Schools in September of 2010. The Silicon Valley Community Foundation is a community organization that includes education as one of its list of grant-making topics. In December of 2012, Zuckerberg made a donation of 18 million shares to the foundation.
Zuckerberg was the driving force behind the establishment of a 501(c)(4) lobbying group known as FWD.us on April 11, 2013. Joe Green, a close friend of Zuckerberg, served as the organization's president. The majority of the group's founders and funders were businesspeople and investors from Silicon Valley. It has been criticized for financing advertisements that advocate for a variety of oil and gas development initiatives, including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Keystone XL pipeline. The group's goals include immigration reform, improving the state of education in the United States, and enabling more technological breakthroughs that benefit the public. However, the group has also been criticized for financing advertisements that advocate for these initiatives. As a form of protest against advertisements funded by FWD.us that were in favor of oil drilling and the Keystone XL pipeline, as well as in opposition to Obamacare among Republican senators in the United States who support immigration reform, a number of liberal and progressive organizations, including the League of Conservation Voters, MoveOn.org, the Sierra Club, Democracy for America, CREDO, Daily Kos, 350.org, and Presente and Progressives United, came to an agreement in 2013 to either refrain from purchasing or remove their Facebook ads for a period of at least two weeks.
A report that was published in the media on June 20, 2013, disclosed that Zuckerberg actively communicated with Facebook users on his own profile page following the online posting of a film that was produced by FWD.us. "The bigger problem we're trying to address is ensuring that the 11 million undocumented folks living in this country now and similar folks in the future are treated fairly," the Internet entrepreneur responded to a claim that the FWD.us organization is "just about tech wanting to hire more people." this was in response to the assertion that the organization is "just about tech wanting to hire more people."
As part of the annual San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Celebration, which took place in June 2013, Zuckerberg participated with Facebook employees in a business float representing the organization. When the firm initially took part in the event in 2011, it had a total of seventy workers. By the time the march took place in 2013, that number had climbed to seven hundred. The pride event that took place in 2013 was particularly notable because it began after a U.S. According to a decision made by the Supreme Court, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) violates the Constitution.
The United States government "blew it" when asked about the PRISM controversy that occurred in the middle of 2013 at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in September of that same year, according to Zuckerberg. His explanation continued by stating that the government had a bad performance in terms of protecting the liberties of its population, the economy, and businesses.
On December 9, 2015, Zuckerberg expressed his desire "to add my voice in support of Muslims in our community and around the world" in a message that he posted on his Facebook page. The comment was a reaction to the aftermath of the incidents that took place in Paris in November 2015 and in San Bernardino in 2015. According to the statement, Muslims are "always welcome" on Facebook, and the reason for his position was that "as a Jew, my parents taught me that we must stand up against attacks on all communities." In addition, the statement stated that Muslims are "always welcome" on Facebook.
workers who had crossed out handwritten words that read "Black Lives Matter" on the walls of the firm and wrote "All Lives Matter" in their place were formally reprimanded by Zuckerberg in an internal message that was distributed to all workers of the company on February 24, 2016. Facebook gives employees the ability to freely post their views and phrases on the walls of the corporation. Following then, the document was disclosed by a number of workers. Zuckerberg said in the memo that he would now consider this overwriting technique to be not only disrespectful but now "malicious as well." This is due to the fact that Zuckerberg had previously denounced this behavior during earlier company meetings, and other officials at Facebook had made requests that were similar to this one. According to the memo that was written by Zuckerberg, "Black Lives Matter does not mean that other lives do not matter; it is simply asking that the black community also achieves the justice that they deserve." The memo also mentioned that the act of crossing something out in and of itself "means silencing speech, or that one person's speech is more important than another's." In addition, Zuckerberg stated in the memo that he will be initiating investigations into the occurrences that occurred. According to comments made by Facebook employees who were interviewed by the New York Daily News and who wished to remain anonymous, "Zuckerberg was genuinely angry about the incident, and it really encouraged staff that Zuckerberg showed a clear understanding of why the phrase 'Black Lives Matter' must exist, as well as why writing through it is a form of harassment and erasure."
In January of 2017, Zuckerberg voiced his disapproval of the executive order issued by Donald Trump to significantly restrict the number of immigrants and refugees coming from certain countries. Additionally, he provided funding for a ballot proposal that would be approved at the state level for the general election in 2020. This effort would result in an increase in taxes by modifying California's Proposition 13 to mandate that commercial and industrial assets in the state be assessed at market rates.
In his book "Save America," which was published in September 2024, Donald Trump wrote about Mark Zuckerberg's visits to the White House. He also wrote, "We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time, he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election." Two months later, Zuckerberg and Trump had dinner at the Mar-a-Lago resort, with Zuckerberg attempting to mend his and his firm's relationship with Trump after the latter won the election. It is said that Meta made a donation of one million dollars to a fund associated with Trump around the same period.
Particularly while he was in his twenties, Zuckerberg had been a financial supporter of a variety of leftist issues, including social justice legislation and immigration reform. As far as Republicans were concerned, he was widely seen as being on the liberal side. Nevertheless, in a letter that he sent to the House Judiciary Committee in August 2024, Zuckerberg expressed his regret that he had not done more to resist the pressure that was coming from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to restrict information that was relevant to COVID-19. He also mentioned that he had no intention of making a donation to the electoral infrastructure. Republicans have designated the payments as "Zuckerbucks" since they were considered to be non-neutral monetary contributions. According to The New York Times, Zuckerberg has privately defined his political leanings as leaning toward libertarianism or classical liberalism. As of the year 2024, Zuckerberg has been suppressing employee activity at Facebook.
=== Weddings and the birth of children //
Priscilla Chan, a fellow Harvard student, was brought to Zuckerberg's attention at a fraternity party when he was in his second year. They started dating in the year 2003. Chan, who was attending the University of California, San Francisco at the time, moved into the property that he had rented in Palo Alto, California, in September of 2010. At the time, Chan was a medical student. In addition to celebrating her graduation from medical school, they tied the knot on May 19, 2012, on the grounds of his estate, which was also the location of the celebration. The news that they were having a daughter was disclosed by Zuckerberg in July of 2015, along with the fact that Chan had previously suffered three miscarriages. In the month of December in 2015, they welcomed their first daughter. In a video that they released for the Chinese New Year, they revealed that their daughter's Chinese name is Chen Mingyu (written as??? in Chinese). The month of August 2017 saw the birth of their second daughter. In March of 2023, Zuckerberg and his wife became parents for the third time. He made the announcement of the birth of their daughter throughout his many social media platforms. In addition, the pair owns a Puli dog that they call Beast, and he has more than two million followers on Facebook together. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg commissioned the visual artist Daniel Arsham to create a sculpture of his wife that was seven feet tall and was shown to the public in the year 2024.
Recognition and the public's perception of you ===
According to Time magazine, Mark Zuckerberg was recognized as one of the most important persons in the world in the years 2008, 2011, 2016, and 2019, and he was also nominated as a finalist on other occasions. During the same year that Facebook surpassed a half billion members, he was honored with the title of Time Person of the Year in 2010. Moreover, he was placed on the list of the Time 100 AI in the year 2024. For the month of December in 2016, the list of the World's Most Powerful People compiled by Forbes placed Zuckerberg at the tenth position. In the year 2023, he was rated eighth on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans, with a personal worth of $106 billion. His rise to the position of second richest person in the world occurred in October of 2024. According to Forbes, Zuckerberg's net worth was predicted to be $219 billion as of December 2024. This placed him in the fourth position among the wealthiest individuals in the world.
During his commencement address at Harvard University in 2017, Zuckerberg urged the audience to take action to halt the progression of global warming. Seven years later, he paid a total of 300 million United States Dollars to acquire the mega-yacht Launchpad, which was once known as Project 1010. In the same year, he placed the boat into service; it releases forty tons of carbon dioxide every hour, which is in direct opposition to his own plea for "stopping climate change."
In 2024, Zuckerberg made a change in his approach. In the beginning, Zuckerberg was known to wear the same gray shirt and jeans for the most of his public appearances. However, he eventually began wearing gold chains and more fashionable streetwear. Zuckerberg's "new look" was referred to as a "MAGA rebrand" by Kase Wickman, who wrote an article for Vanity Fair. Wickman said that Zuckerberg's shift in fashion is comparable to Meta's efforts to placate the Trump government. A stylist was not hired, according to Zuckerberg.
Religion and other hobbies are also included in this category.
Zuckerberg was born and reared in a home that adhered to the Reform Jewish faith; nevertheless, he subsequently disclosed that he was an atheist. In spite of this, he stated in 2016 that "I went through a period where I questioned things, but now I believe religion is very important." In 2017, he and his wife embarked on a tour across the country with the intention of "visiting every state in the union and learning more about a sliver of the nearly two billion people who regularly use the social network." He talked at Mother Emanuel, which was the location of a shooting that took place in 2015, and visited with members of the farming and business communities.
During the year 2022, Zuckerberg began training in mixed martial arts (MMA) as well as Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ). He has been transparent about his passion for both of these sports via his training. In a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competition that took place on May 6, 2023, he competed at the white belt level and won both a silver and a gold medal in both the gi and no gi categories. Dave Camarillo presented him with a promotion to the rank of blue belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu in the month of July 2023. After another four months had passed, Zuckerberg made the announcement that he was getting ready to make his debut in mixed martial arts (MMA), but that he had sustained an injury to his anterior cruciate ligament while training, which necessitated surgery and had delayed this.