Mark Zuckerberg’s emphatic defence of Facebook at F8 2018 fails to address the core issues plaguing the platform

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was clearly a man on a mission. His **impassioned keynote address at F8 2018**  stressed on the only thing he could focus on, privacy and the Cambridge Analytica data breach . Coming from a man who’s been likened to an emotionless alien or robot, the spectacle was rather…unexpected. [caption id=“attachment_4426873” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during his Day 1 testimony before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees/ REUTERS[/caption] In his address, Zuckerberg spoke at length about the motivations behind Facebook, the company’s ideological dream of bringing people together and the importance that Facebook ascribes to privacy. Coming in the wake of Zuckerberg’s Congressional hearings and on the back of WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum’s abrupt departure , I find it hard to actually believe a word of Zuckerberg’s spiel. By far the worst moment of the presentation was when Zuckerberg made a joke about the Congressional hearings. Yes, many of the Senators interviewing Zuckerberg had little idea of what Facebook was and how it functioned. That still doesn’t change the fact that Zuckerberg had no appropriate response to several of the questions that were brought up. To make light of something so serious is in itself an indicator of how little the privacy of Facebook’s users matters to Zuckerberg. While Zuckerberg talked about Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s failure to anticipate the breach, he failed to address the fact that Facebook deliberately chose to keep its users in the dark. While Zuckerberg talked about being unprepared for state-sponsored election interference, he failed to mention that Facebook works hand-in-glove with dictators and likely profited aplenty off the money that the fake ads brought in. While Zuckerberg spoke about fighting fake news, he failed to acknowledge that it was Facebook’s algorithms that created the proverbial echo chambers that allowed, and continues to allow, fake news to spread at an incredibly alarming rate. While Zuckerberg talked about “building meaningful relationships”, it’s quite evident that his plan is simply to take on Tinder (once he’s done ripping off Snapchat, which should take a while). While discussing **Koum’s abrupt departure** from the company, Zuckerberg tried to take credit for bringing end-to-end encryption to WhatsApp, the very encryption that Facebook tried to undermine. While talking about Facebook’s commitment to building communities, Zuckerberg failed to emphasise the importance of user privacy. “We need to keep building”, says Zuckerberg. Yes, but at what cost? At this point, that price is already too high.