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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
There’s something decidedly ironic about the fact that while Facebook collects the personal data of its users, the platform’s founder remains a largely unknowable, inscrutable figure. A new profile of the elusive, divisive billionaire, Zuckerberg: King of the Metaverse, seeks to rectify that.
The 90-minute Sky film promises to tell “the inside story” of one of the world’s most influential men through the testimonies of various industry cognoscenti, biographers, investors and former colleagues. Yet the documentary can struggle to broach the thick layer of corporate sheen that insulates him. While The Social Network offered a penetrating if speculative character study, here we have a neat chronology of his career and a catalogue of the triumphs, controversies and failings that have defined his tenure as CEO. The closest we get to intimate biographical insight is an anecdote about how his mother used to call him by the rather Machiavellian pet name of “the prince”.
But the show is not aimed at those already au fait with the ins and outs of Facebook’s origins and operations or those who binge-watched Zuckerberg’s 2018 senate hearings. Viewed as an explanatory, entry-level survey of Facebook’s two-decade history, it is lucid, concise and pretty dispiriting as it chronicles how a platform designed to foster connections became synonymous with sowing discord; how it went from helping topple despots in the Arab Spring to being accused of undermining democracy.
Given the first-hand expertise of many of the contributors, it feels like a missed opportunity that the film doesn’t provide in-depth analysis of how and why Zuckerberg’s priorities, policies and public persona have changed over time. Which isn’t to say that punches are pulled: one journalist brands him a “dictator”; another comments that she found it easier to get people in oppressive countries to talk to her than Facebook employees.
Yet perhaps the most damning comment about Zuckerberg comes from Zuckerberg himself. As Harvard students flocked to the first version of Facebook, he messaged a friend to say: “they trust me . . . Dumb fucks.”
★★★☆☆
On Sky Documentaries from January 11 at 9pm and on NOW thereafter
