At Harvard, inequality on Zuck’s mind

Massachusetts: Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday returned to Harvard, where he launched Facebook and then dropped out, telling graduates it’s up to them to bring purpose to the world, fight inequality and strengthen the global community.

“Change starts local. Even global changes start small — with people like us,” the Facebook CEO said. He shared stories about graduates such as David Razu Aznar, a former city leader who led the effort to legalize gay marriage in Mexico City, and Agnes Igoye, who grew up in conflict zones in Uganda and now trains law enforcement officers.

“And this is my story too,” Mr Zuckerberg added. “A student in a dorm room, connecting one community at a time, and keeping at it until one day we can connect the whole world.”

Such lofty talk now comes naturally to Zuckerberg, a 33-year-old billionaire who has committed to giving away nearly all of his wealth. In February, he sketched out an ambitious, if vague, vision for Facebook that committed the company to developing “social infrastructure” that would help build a “global community that works for all of us.”

But it also strikes a sharp contrast with the criticism Facebook has taken recently — not so much for connecting the world (a big chunk of it, anyway) as for failing to anticipate how vulnerable that connectedness could be to those who abuse it.

Mr Zuckerberg, who like the graduates is a millennial, started Facebook in his dorm room in 2004. What began as a closed networking site for Harvard students is now a global communications force with nearly 2 billion members. Facebook’s founding was the subject of a Hollywood movie, “The Social Network,” in 2010.

Facebook's effect has been profound. It has connected people who would have never met otherwise, letting them form supportive networks online and offline. And it has allowed people to communicate in developing countries even if they don’t have a phone number or a smartphone.

But it has also served to spread misinformation bordering on propaganda, hateful views and bullying, reflecting the worst parts of humanity back to us.

In his commencement speech, in interviews and in his February manifesto, he is decidedly optimistic about all that. He's been saying he wants to make the world more open and connected for more than a decade now, and he doesn't relent. He told how, when Facebook’s investors and executives wanted him to sell the company early on, he resisted.