Mark Zuckerberg’s New Year’s Resolution: Fix Facebook

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By Nathan Guttman January 5, 2018

In previous years, Mark Zuckerberg set personal goals for himself: He vowed to learn Mandarin, to read at least two books a month and to travel to as many U.S. states as possible.

This year, perhaps grasping the enormous role his social media network played in the 2016 elections and in shaping America’s political discourse, Zuckerberg’s resolution focuses more on everybody else and less on him: “The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do,” Zuckerberg wrote in his New Year’s post. He said his personal challenge for 2018 was “to focus on fixing these important issues” but also added that “We won’t prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools.”

Zuckerberg admitted this pledge “may not seem like a personal challenge on its face,” but explained that he would “learn more by focusing intensely on these issues than I would by doing something completely separate.”

Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected] or on Twitter @nathanguttman

Nathan Guttman, staff writer, was the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he was the features editor for Ha’aretz and chief editor of Channel 1 TV evening news. He was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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