Report: You Cannot Block Mark Zuckerberg On Facebook

facebook-monthly-fee1-300x202Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is certainly an active user of his own site, but as Gizmodo pointed out this week, his posts aren’t all exactly winners. The sometimes-annoying quality of Zuckerberg’s posts is what prompted the article’s writer to block him on Facebook — or at least to try. When the writer attempted to block the tech boss, a pop-up notification appeared that said “this profile can’t be blocked for now.”

Facebook often touts its dedication to user freedom, though this report seems to fly in the face of that edict. Coupled with other recent news, like Facebook’s blocking of ad blockers, it becomes clear that the site wants you to be able to make choices — as long as they line up with the choices the site wants you to make.

“I tried to block Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook this morning, only to find that King Zuck is immune from Facebook’s mere mortal block feature,” William Turton wrote on Gizmodo. “I could block Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, and Zuckerberg’s wife, Priscilla Chan. But not Zuck. He is invulnerable to blockage.”

It’s a humorous article, but it’s one with a serious undercurrent. How does Zuckerberg expect 1.8 billion active Facebook users to play by the rules when he himself does not? For a platform supposedly dedicated to user choice, the inability for users to block Zuckerberg feels like an awfully authoritarian move.