Zuckerberg: If Facebook existed in 2003, we would have avoided the Iraq war

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a speech on reorganizing the controversial social network laws to become more ethical.

At Georgetown University last Thursday, billionaire Zuckerberg, 34, delivered a 45-minute speech in which he presented his position on freedom of expression, stood up against calls for tighter restrictions on the social network, and criticized tyranny and censorship in China.

Iraq war
But what attracted most attention Zuckerberg linked the purpose of the establishment of Facebook and influenced by the Iraq war, "When I was in college, our country had just entered the war in Iraq .. The mood on campus was not believing in the war .. I felt like we were acting without hearing a lot of Important views. "

"I remember feeling that if more people had a platform to share their experiences, things might have gone differently," he said. "These early years shaped my thinking that giving everyone a voice gives power to the marginalized, and drives society to be better over time." ".

Zuckerberg's speech was understood to be the creation of Facebook in 2004, motivated by his desire to give people a platform to express their views on the rejection of the Iraq war, which he has not previously mentioned in any of his interviews, not even in documents dating to the most famous platform around the world.

Unsupervised date
All sources agree that the idea of ​​Facebook originated with Zuckerberg in 2003 while at Harvard University, where he created a notorious Web site that allows users to evaluate students according to their attractiveness without their consent, and then punished by the College Board and the site was closed.

Zuckerberg, meanwhile, was asked to work at Harvard Connection, a social network focused on students at the college, but - without the knowledge of its twin creators Tyler, Cameron Winklevus and Divya Narendra - created his own competition service.

They then took Zuckerberg to court where they considered it a flagrant theft of their idea, before reaching a compromise by giving them $ 65 million in money and shares in 2008.

In those early days, Zuckerberg was also clear about the rights of users and the materials they share on Facebook. In other leaked messages, he described his social network users as "stupid" to trust him, letting them share their personal data without their consent. "If you need information about anyone at Harvard, just ask .. I have more than 4,000 messages," he said. Email, photos, and addresses. "

Zuckerberg's speech did not address any of this. Instead, he spoke with more optimism how the Iraq war appeared to have influenced his approach to freedom of expression.

“When students have to express who they are and what matters to them, they organize more social events, start more jobs, and challenge some well-established ways of doing things on campus,” he says. “It taught me that the world's attention is focused on big events and institutions. That most of the progress in our lives comes from ordinary people who have a bigger voice. "

Zuckerberg forgot
The retrospect of these pink days on Facebook prompted a quick online reaction. The Virg correspondent Casey Newton described him in his famous column on technical policy as "a tactical mistake and a fallacy. Students voted during the Iraq war. "

"All previous reports on this subject indicate that the truth was more disturbing, and that the beginning of Zuckerberg's deceptive speech caused that many people did not complete the rest of the speech."

"Thank you Mark Zuckerberg for giving me a website at the college where I can express my feelings about the Iraq war, but Facebook's only use was for those who used the platform to see if the sexy girl in the classroom had a better friend than me," screenwriter Dan Hernandez joked on Twitter. .. I say: What a shame. "