That this was a particular year, full of sacrifices and full of unforeseen events, someone for sure has told to Mark in case he didn’t notice.
In fact, although the number of unemployed people with this pandemic has increased in America, Facebook’s number one has seen its portfolio increase to 104 billion dollars, becoming the third richest man in the world, in part thanks to this pandemic.
Completing the podium in second place there’s Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft with 120 billion dollars) and Jeff Bezos (owner of Amazon with 190 billion dollars) as first.
But concretely, apart from increasing his assets and the good reaction from investors regarding the Instagram Reels, what causes is Zuckerberg engaged in this pandemic?
Beneficial actions
It is now known that in the last 5 years Mark and his wife Priscilla Chan have been involved in the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), an association that has the mission to “build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone” and to “advance human potential and promote equality in areas such as health, education, scientific research and energy”.
In order to believe in its commitment to health for everyone in the world, the charitable foundation awarded a million dollars to the European research project that has developed a new X-ray tomography technique called “HiP-CT”.
This technology aims to observe inside the human body with an unprecedented resolution even reaching a definition that is tens of times higher than a common CT scan.
In the specific case of the period in which humanity is in fact, it was possible to observe the lung of a victim of Covid-19, showing the damage caused by the SarsCoV2 virus.
This project, whose coordinator is Paul Tafforeau, saw the participation of Peter Lee and Rebecca Shipley of University London College.
The success of the project was determined by the upgrade of the European super microscope costing 150 million euros, which made it possible to install the brightest X-ray source ever obtained to date. All this thanks to the idea of the Italian Pantaleo Raimondi.
In fact, below it is possible to observe the video in a 3D animation that shows the deformations in the bronchi and pulmonary alveoli, making visible the entire network of blood vessels of the organ, up to the smallest capillaries involved in the gas exchange of the alveoli.
Workplace platform
If on the one hand Mark, under the influence of his wife Priscilla, has decided to reward an undoubtedly stunning project, on the other hand, he has decided to make available his recent Workplace platform.
In fact, through this pseudo-Facebook for companies, governments and emergency organizations, they will be able to carry out their internal company communications through this tool, sharing documents, with the ability to tag their colleagues or comment just like the classic blue social network in completely free for one year.
The accusations against Mark and Facebook
Fake news
Although for a long time now Zuckerberg has been accustomed to receiving pressure and accusations on the topic of fake news, in this period more than ever Mark has activated himself to promote at the top of the news feed stream, a verified news aggregator containing data about the virus.
However, although Facebook intends to reduce the circulation of fake news, the latter has no intention of sharing the data of its users to contain the pandemic. In this regard, in fact, Mark specified that if a government were to ask him, he would be opposed as he wouldn’t have given information collected by the platform on individuals without their consent.
Right orientation
It is now evident that Facebook is now capable of strongly influencing people and creating real political movements within it. On this issue, however, Zuckerberg has declared himself completely unrelated, stating that his systems don’t work in this way.
In fact, according to him, the internet has always allowed individuals greater powers, which is why if someone indicated a case in which a vaccine caused damage in the past, thus speaking out against vaccines, it would be difficult for him to completely deny the possibility of doing these statements.
Therefore, once again Facebook shows itself to be pro-freedom of thought and expression, even if these may seem somewhat questionable to most.
On the contrary, although mainly on a political theme, are Twitter and Pinterest, which have decided to ban political advertisements on their platforms by stating:
“Internet advertising is very powerful and effective, but it carries significant political risks where it can be used to influence votes. This has nothing to do with freedom of expression. It has to do with paying to reach the widest possible audience and this has significant consequences that today’s democratic architecture may not be able to handle.”
Zuckerberg against the American administration and the interview with immunologist Anthony Fauci.
Always driven by the desire to counter disinformation and react to the accusations of those who think Facebook does too little to limit the circulation of fake news, not taking editorial responsibility, Zuckerberg personally organizes an interview with the famous infectious disease expert from the United States, as well as White House Advisor.
In this conversation, which lasted for about an hour in which users could directly ask questions to the immunologist via direct comments, the main topics were the progress of the vaccine and what to do to slow down the spread.
What comes out of the conversation between the two is the immunologist’s strong encouragement to people:
“We are experiencing a terrible ordeal, but this will all end! Vaccines are on the horizon, we must take care of each other and hold on.”
In this context, Mark then underlined how in his opinion the American administration was lacking in the organization and management of the pandemic (however, by not naming Donald Trump in these statements), thus leading the nation to feel the pinch and record a contagion curve much higher than in other countries.
Although the words not exactly to honey, he also specified that Facebook is trying to collaborate with the newly elected president Biden:
“Our team at Facebook has already reached out to the incoming administration to help with the covid response in any way that we can. I’m sure there will be a few important things that we can do together” is what Zuckerberg said.
Smart working or not?
In managing his company, Mark was not immediately determined to implement the smart working model for his employees.
In fact, worried that it might increase the risk of anxiety and depression, Mark shifted his employees’ focus on suicide and self-harm prevention.
However, these same employees wrote an open letter to Zuckerberg, Sandberg and the CEOs of outsourcing companies Accenture and Covalen in which they accuse Facebook of putting the health and safety of their families at risk to keep the social network’s profits even during the pandemic.
With this letter, then, Mark accepted that their work will continue from home until July 2021.
It is worse than the New Year event!
While revenues have increased, this has led to a consequence on the load that Facebook’s servers are forced to bear this year.
Mark himself said he was concerned given the traffic peaks in recent times.
Even making a comparison with the New Year’s peaks, these limits have already been largely exceeded, thus leading Mark to have to manage the situation of the company’s own infrastructures, so as to allow people to be able to access the services they are used to.
Conclusions
Given the premise of this article and how the situation was then illustrated, here are two points of observation:
On the one hand, there is a 36 year old boy who sees his assets increase exponentially during the pandemic, on the other hand, there is certainly a man who tries to reject the accusations he receives daily about his social network and beneficial causes of which he always advocates.
The choice is yours, however, it is undeniable how our everyday lives are different and influenced by these social networks of which, obviously, we can no longer do without.
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