{"id":1040,"date":"2024-02-01T13:41:26","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T18:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/?p=1040"},"modified":"2024-02-01T13:41:26","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T18:41:26","slug":"mark-zuckerberg-apologies-to-families-spontaneously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/mark-zuckerberg-apologies-to-families-spontaneously\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Zuckerberg Apologies to Families Spontaneously"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve noted in these blogs how difficult it is to make a public apology. Yesterday Mark Zuckerberg offered an apology that was not only public, it was spontaneous \u2013 and compelled (at least, I presume he did not see this coming). Mr. Zuckerberg was testifying in a Senate child safety hearing attended by family members whose young relatives had been harmed by social media, including FaceBook, owned by Zuckerberg\u2019s company, Meta. Senator Josh Hawley asked if Zuckerberg had ever apologized<\/a> to the families, and when Zuckerberg hesitated, Hawley asked if he\u2019d like to do it right there. So Zuckerberg stood up, turned around to face the crowd behind him, and spoke:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry for everything that you have all gone through. It\u2019s terrible. No one should have to go through the things that your families have. This is why we invest so much, and are going to continue doing industry-leading efforts \u2026 to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things that your families have had to suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n

I doubt that this statement brought any comfort to those family members. It isn\u2019t even quite an apology. It\u2019s an acknowledgement that something terrible happened, and that the speaker feels sorry for them. It also talks about efforts to improve things in the future. But there\u2019s no responsibility, no admission of anything specific that the speaker did to cause the victims harm.<\/p>\n

What did impress me \u2013 especially because it was spontaneous \u2013 is what he didn\u2019t say. He didn\u2019t downplay the families\u2019 pain \u2013 instead, he mentioned it more than once. He didn\u2019t suggest that they should be blaming other sources and not him. He didn\u2019t offer explanations or excuses. Public apologies often fall apart because they wander into one of these danger zones. He avoided those.<\/p>\n

A little over a year ago, Zuckerberg issued a public apology when he laid off a few thousand Meta employees. I was impressed with that apology because he took ownership for the problem without offering a defense (\u201cI got this wrong and I take responsibility for that.\u201d) (see my post of November 12, 2022) Public apologies are hard to do. Mark Zuckerberg keeps getting opportunities to remind us of that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve noted in these blogs how difficult it is to make a public apology. Yesterday Mark Zuckerberg offered an apology that was not only public, it was spontaneous \u2013 and compelled (at least, I presume he did not see this coming). Mr. Zuckerberg was testifying in a Senate child safety hearing attended by family members […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1040"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1042,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040\/revisions\/1042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}