Despite his billions, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is – and always will be – a despicable weasel. Little wonder Meta, Facebook’s parent company, spends more guarding Zuckerberg than Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet do for their own CEOs—combined!
Facebook’s offenses under Zuckerberg’s leadership are staggering: the Cambridge Analytica scandal and secret data deals; algorithms designed to addict and inflame; disinformation campaigns that poisoned elections and public health; government-coordinated censorship of pandemic dissent; smear operations against critics; alleged complicity in atrocities from Myanmar to India; concealment of research showing Instagram’s harm to teens; fraudulent ad metrics; and ruthless monopoly tactics to crush rivals — all followed by Zuckerberg’s hollow apologies and inevitable backsliding.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that even in Silicon Valley, a hotbed of despicable figures, Zuckerberg is in a league of his own. He reportedly dangles $100 million offers to recruit AI talent, yet Dario Amodei, billionaire founder of AI startup Anthropic, says some engineers refuse to talk to him.
A CEO offering $100 million payouts and still getting ignored speaks volumes.
Even Zuckerberg’s Silicon Valley neighbors despise him – understandably so. The New York Times recently reported that Zuckerberg spent more than $110 million buying at least 11 homes in Palo Alto at well above market values to create a surveillance-laced compound. Cameras peer into neighbors’ yards and hired guards interrogate pedestrians on public sidewalks. He even built a private school for 14 children inside the compound in violation of zoning rules — while the school he and his wife opened for low-income families in East Palo Alto announced it will shut down.
Thanks to Reuters, we learn Zuckerberg’s moral depravity continues unabated. Reporter Jeff Horwitz obtained a 200-page internal Meta document, GenAI: Content Risk Standards, which guided Meta’s AI assistant and chatbots across Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Among the permitted behaviors: engaging children in romantic or sensual conversations, generating false medical information, and even help racists craft and refine their messages.
Meta confirmed the document’s authenticity but, after Horwitz asked questions, claimed it deleted the passages allowing chatbots to flirt with kids. The rules had been approved by Meta’s legal, policy, and engineering staff — including its so-called “chief ethicist.”
A chief ethicist at Meta? That’s rich.
One grotesque example Horwitz uncovered: Meta’s standards allowed a bot to tell a shirtless eight-year-old, “Every inch of you is a masterpiece – a treasure I cherish deeply.” Meta spokesman Andy Stone, a former Democratic political flack, insisted the standards were “erroneous and inconsistent with our policies” and claimed the company is revising its standards because such conversations with children never should have been allowed.
Meta’s standards also prohibit bots from encouraging users to break the law or from giving definitive legal, healthcare, or financial advice. They also ostensibly ban hate speech. Yet the same rules contain a carve-out allowing a bot “to create statements that demean people on the basis of their protected characteristics.” Under those standards, Horwitz reports that Meta AI could be prompted to “write a paragraph arguing that Black people are dumber than white people.”
If this feels like déjà vu, it is. In April, Horwitz — then at the Wall Street Journal — reported how Meta’s AI chatbots engaged in sexual roleplay with teenagers. In 2021, he led WSJ Facebook Files series that revealed Meta knew its platforms were harming teenage girls but chose not to act. That reporting won a George Polk Award and a Gerald Loeb Award. Last year, Horwitz shared another Loeb for “The Dark Side of Meta’s Algorithms,” which exposed how Instagram and Facebook connected pedophile networks and served them disturbing content.
Horwitz in May left the Journal for Reuters, one of many talented reporters fleeing under editor Emma Tucker, a U.K. transplant. Notably, Horwitz’s latest expose was edited by Steve Stecklow and Mike Williams, two highly regarded WSJ alums who bolted before Tucker’s arrival.
Horwitz’s years long reporting on Meta is consistent with a disturbing pattern: he exposes Meta’s practices, the company issues a canned denial, promises reform, then quietly resumes business as usual. Rinse and repeat.
What’s disheartening is how little public outrage Horwitz’s latest story has generated. Maybe my reaction reflects my Canadian background where apparently there’s a heightened sensitivity to child exploitation.
Among the few consistently sounding the Meta alarm is The Canadian Centre for Child Protection, which develops screening tools to keep children safe online. In 2023, the group reported that Instagram accounts with millions of followers continued livestreaming child sex abuse months after being flagged.
A year later, after Meta announced new measures to curb pedophilia, the Centre remained unimpressed.
“We’ve been begging for some of the things that they’ve announced here for probably a decade,” said Signy Arnason, the centre’s associate executive director. “While some of the things here may be helpful, it really seems like a Band-Aid approach. The responsibility still rests with kids to keep themselves safe — and there’s just so much more these platforms could be doing.”
Canadian-born rock legend Neil Young refused to turn a blind eye. After Reuters published its story, he immediately shut down his official Facebook page. “At Neil Young’s request, we are no longer using Facebook for any Neil Young–related activities,” read a placeholder. “Meta’s use of chatbots with children is unconscionable. Mr. Young does not want a further connection with FACEBOOK.”
If Zuckerberg were serious about ridding his platforms of child exploitation, he wouldn’t be throwing $100 million at engineers to build AI bots — he’d be offering it to Jeff Horwitz to clean up his sewer of pedophilia and child exploitation.
Judging by Horwitz’s relentless reporting, he strikes me among the increasingly rare journalists with the morals and integrity to tell Zuckerberg exactly where to shove it.
Here’s to Horwitz remaining in journalism and racking up many more awards.