This year marks the 15th anniversary of Facebook, and the social media giant is facing more questions than ever regarding its role in the world. However, instead of owning up to his company’s many mistakes, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg used the occasion to get defensive about his creation.
In a post celebrating the platform’s anniversary, Zuckerberg decried Facebook’s critics as “overly emphasizing” the negative aspects of the company instead of highlighting the positive ways in which it has helped its users connect. Given the scandals that plagued Facebook in 2018, Zuck’s comments could be construed as a little tone-deaf. However, he also sneakily made a rather eye-popping promise: to dedicate $3.7 billion toward safety and security this year.
“We’re now taking steps that wouldn’t have been possible even just a few years ago — for example, this year we plan to spend more on safety and security than our whole revenue at the time of our IPO, and the artificial intelligence required to help manage content at scale didn’t exist until recently,” he wrote in a post on his Facebook profile.
That’s a staggering amount of money, though given Facebook’s many security issues, it’s not unwarranted. Now let’s hope Zuckerberg actually follows through on this lofty promise.