The Facebook CEO destroyed privacy as we know it. Imagine what he’d do in the White House.
Mark Zuckerberg is probably going to run for president. Speculation about the Facebook CEO’s political ambitions has been swirling ever since he embarked on a highly publicized “personal” tour in January to meet Facebook users all over the country. Later that month, he hired former campaign managers for George W. Bush and Barack Obama and soon after released a perplexing manifesto about “building the world we all want.” The recent news that he has brought on pollster Joel Benenson to pursue vague philanthropic “research” sparked another flurry of “Zuckerberg for President?” articles, ranging from musings on his potential platform to advice on his path to the White House.
There are a number of easy criticisms to make of a Zuckerberg candidacy, most of which have to do with either his geeky appearance or his mind-boggling fortune. These criticisms are fairly legitimate: Zuckerberg has been spotted in a suit maybe twice, and despite having come a long way from the “dissolving in a lake of his own sweat” days, he’s not known for his public-speaking skills. Even worse, he’s the ultimate poster boy for Silicon Valley, which isn’t exactly quite a selling point in a country currently witnessing populist surges on both the left and the right.
But there are deeper problems with Zuckerberg than his status as a corporate shill. His potential presidential candidacy should make us uneasy not because he’s a CEO, but because he’s the CEO of Facebook, the company responsible for the largest and most brazen data-collection project in human history.
Zuckerberg’s election would mean handing over the leadership of an already privacy-violating government to the creator of one of the world’s most invasive surveillance platforms.
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