Why Mark Zuckerberg and Meta can't build the future

The Star

8 hours ago

Last week, a notification flashed. 'Add your email address for extra security,' my phone chirped. It was from WhatsApp. I stared at the screen, a single question forming in my mind: Security? Or surveillance?
I tapped 'No.'
The feeling wasn't anger. It was a cold, familiar déjà vu. Just days earlier, Meta had finally confirmed it: Ads were coming. Mark Zuckerberg had broken his word. Again.
'No Ads. No Games. No Gimmicks.'
That was the founding promise of WhatsApp.
When Jan Koum and Brian Acton built WhatsApp, they were obsessed with simplicity and user trust. Acton even scrawled the motto on a piece of paper and gave it to Koum as a daily reminder. In 2014, when Facebook (now Meta) acquired WhatsApp for US$19bil, Mark Zuckerberg promised to honor these principles.
That was then.
For a decade, Zuckerberg failed to go beyond the newsfeed. Facebook phone? Flop. Free Basics Internet? Banned. Libra crypto? Dead. Metaverse? Billions burned, no payoff. Now, as AI reshapes the world, Meta's stuck – trailing ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
As of mid-2025, Meta's best model ranks about 140 Elo points behind Gemini and 90 behind Claude – clear proof it's trailing the front-runners in head-to-head arena voting. Surprisingly, Llama 4, the latest model, ranks even lower than its predecessor, Llama 3.1.
So the WhatsApp ad play is retreating to the old playbook. Wall Street cheers, and shares soar nearly 3%. But this shift masked a deeper sign of stagnation. Here is a leader who has architected a system to ensure he never has to learn from his mistakes.
Either through luck or design, Zuckerberg has pioneered a system of absolute control, cemented by a dual-class share structure that grants him super-voting rights. While he owns 13% of the company's stock, this structure grants him around 54% of the voting power. Zuckerberg remains CEO and de facto emperor of Meta – no matter the crisis, no matter the cost. When you can't be fired, you can't be taught. He holds the wheel, unopposed.
And if there's one other founder who stands as the starkest contrast to Mark Zuckerberg in strategy and in style, it's Steve Jobs .
The Steve Jobs that people forget
I teach innovation at IMD. That means I also hear a fair number of speakers telling Apple's story.
What memory sometimes does to people is that it glorifies failure to the point of hero worship. We flatten timelines. We cherry-pick triumphs. But the worst affront for me isn't when someone gets the facts wrong (though that's bad enough). It's when they get the lessons wrong.
I remember one speaker praising Steve Jobs's original Macintosh team and their 'pirate' mentality. Maybe you know the quote. Jobs once said, 'It's better to be a pirate than join the Navy .' He turned the Mac division into a rebel crew inside Apple – a startup within a company. He even hoisted a pirate flag over one part of the campus. The speaker framed it as a masterclass in creativity. A celebration of rebel talent.
What the speaker forgot was the ending of that story. The rebellion didn't save Apple ; it nearly sank it. Jobs's pirate flag flew high over a commercial catastrophe.
He promised 500,000 Macs sold in the first year. The reality? A humiliating 10% of that.
The machine was a marvel of vision and a monument to its creator's ego. Jobs's stubbornness was baked into its very circuits. No cooling fan, because he hated the noise – leading to the nickname 'the beige toaster', as it constantly overheated. No hard drive. Not enough memory to run Word and Excel.
The famous '1984' ad promised a revolution against Big Brother. Apple delivered a computer that couldn't handle a spreadsheet. The mercurial, often impulsive young founder continued unabated. By most accounts, he was a terrible manager.
His clashes with Apple's CEO had grown so intense that by 1985, the board agreed to oust Jobs from the very company he had founded.
This first Steve Jobs wasn't a story of genius; it was hubris. And it ended, as it had to, in exile.
But what happened next is a study in personal growth.
Is Mark Zuckerberg unteachable?
My initial conclusion is that part of the problem is that Mark Zuckerberg is unteachable. I want to clarify what I mean by 'unteachable'.
Many observers rightly point out that Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly learned and adapted in business terms – pivoting to mobile, bringing in Sheryl Sandberg , reorganising to counter TikTok. As a strategist, he's remarkably teachable. But the focus of this piece is different: he seems unteachable about the non-market consequences of his empire.
The same founder control that powered Meta's business triumphs also insulated Zuckerberg from ever truly reckoning with Facebook's societal costs: the mental health crisis among teens, the erosion of shared reality, the amplification of division. If the founder can't be fired, the company never has to internalise those costs. That raises an uncomfortable question – one Jim Collins might pose: If your company disappeared tomorrow, would it leave a hole that couldn't easily be filled by someone else?
The first major test
Former Meta insider Sarah Wynn‑Williams writes in Careless People that Facebook never learns, because it never has to. The most damning case of this unteachability? The Rohingya genocide in Myanmar .
Throughout the 2010s Facebook raced to dominate South-East Asia . In Myanmar – population 50 million – Facebook became so widespread it often represents the internet itself. Yet in 2015 the company employed just two Burmese‑speaking moderators.
The engagement algorithm found its ultimate accelerant: hate. Posts calling the Rohingya people 'dogs', 'maggots', and 'rapists' didn't just appear; they went viral, amplified by Facebook's own systems. Calls for extermination became the platform's background hum. The machine was working perfectly, optimising for clicks and comments, even if the content was pure poison.
UN investigators were blunt, concluding Facebook played a 'determining role' in a campaign of ethnic cleansing that saw 700,000 people driven from their homes.
This wasn't an accident. It was a business choice. At the peak of the crisis Meta had one Burmese moderator for every 200,000 users. A former UN official put it plainly: 'Facebook has turned into a beast' – a beast that remains wildly profitable.
What happened next, of course, is something you already know.
The perfect voting machine
Mark Zuckerberg learned to talk the talk on privacy. Then he doubled down on selling ads to politicians with zero safeguards.
Cambridge Analytica , the now-notorious consultancy, exploited Facebook's lax data-sharing policies to psychologically profile voters and sway them with targeted propaganda. But the scandal went deeper.
Later revelations exposed how Facebook's own microtargeting tools powered internal 'deterrence' campaigns. The goal? Lower turnout. Select users – young women, white liberals, Black voters – received dark posts: invisible, nonpublic messages engineered to demoralise and distract. No accountability. No transparency. Just suppression at scale.
Facebook didn't write the messages. But it built the system. Then sold it to whoever paid.
You'd think a scandal that exposed Facebook's role in influencing a democratic election would trigger sweeping reforms. That governments would rein in the platform. Audit the code. Lock down user data. Enforce real privacy.
But no. They didn't confront Facebook .
They courted Zuckerberg. They kissed his ring.
Over nearly two decades at Facebook's helm, Mark Zuckerberg has made bold moves and big mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable. What matters is whether you learn and adapt.
Steve Jobs had to. He was fired from the company he founded. Zuckerberg, on the other hand, never needed to live through that kind of reckoning.
Now imagine a parallel universe where the board replaced Zuckerberg after the refugee crisis in Myanmar with a careful, values-driven CEO who delivered only mediocre returns but prioritised societal well-being. Yes, we'd lose the business marvel that is Meta: the incredible execution, the bold bets on AR/VR, the open-source AI strategy. But we might gain something harder to measure: a global communications platform that enhances rather than erodes human flourishing.
This piece isn't a rejection of Zuckerberg's business genius. It only asks whether winning that game was worth the price we've all paid. These aren't competing views, I hope – rather, they're complementary lenses for understanding one of history's most consequential companies.
The surprising endorsement from every world leader
After Trump's election, Zuckerberg addressed a global summit of world leaders. His own executive, Sarah Wynn-Williams , braced for backlash.
Instead, it was a bubble bath.
'How do we build the next Facebook in our country?' one prime minister softballed.
'How does connectivity help in actual day-to-day governance?' asked Chile's President Michelle Bachelet .
Before Zuckerberg could even reply, Canada's Justin Trudeau jumped in. He praised electronic benefit transfers, internet infrastructure, and online efficiency. He might as well have read from Facebook's press kit.
Not a single question about the election. Not one.
Of course not. Trump's election didn't scare them. It impressed them.
Zuckerberg controls the most influential media platform on the planet. Facebook gets people elected. These leaders want in.
But politics doesn't build enduring companies. Innovation does.
And in the end, innovation keeps the score.
How Apple grew where Facebook didn't
What happened to Steve Jobs is not just a comeback story. It's a study in personal growth.
After being ousted from Apple in 1985, he spent 12 years in the wilderness. He founded NeXT – a sleek but struggling computer company. He bought Pixar – then a niche graphics studio. Both ventures moved slowly, forcing him to grapple with failure. And, more importantly, with himself.
At NeXT, he was chastened. At Pixar, he matured. Working alongside creative giants like Ed Catmull and John Lasseter , Jobs wasn't the star. He was the support.
He learned how to support brilliance rather than control it. He witnessed a culture where creativity and technology collaborated, not competed. And when Pixar finally triumphed with Toy Story , Jobs's confidence returned, but now laced with humility.
By the time he returned to Apple in 1997, Jobs was transformed. He didn't just launch new products; he killed vanity projects. He simplified the product line. He listened more. Delegated more. Built a world-class team – one that included Jony Ive , Tim Cook , and Avie Tevanian – and empowered them.
Most importantly, he gave up being the smartest guy in the room.
The young Jobs clashed with Disney's Michael Eisner . The older Jobs built trust with CEO Bob Iger .
He once refused to bring iTunes to Windows. Later, when his team made the case, he listened, and then threw his energy behind making the cross-platform experience exceptional.
Even the iPhone wasn't a solo vision. It was a masterwork of integration, combining innovations from independent teams into one cohesive breakthrough.
He no longer had to own every idea. He had to integrate the best ones across the company.
And the most poignant part? His most productive years came after his cancer diagnosis. With time running out, he became obsessed with legacy over ego. Every decision counted.
The result? Not just the iPhone or iPad, but a company culture strong enough to outlive him.
You can't innovate beyond ads unless the leader evolves
Apple's rebirth came from a founder who changed. Meta's stagnation comes from one who won't.
Just look at the pattern: 2013 – Facebook phone: A partnership with HTC to launch a 'Facebook-centric' phone flopped so badly AT&T pulled it within months.
phone: A partnership with HTC to launch a 'Facebook-centric' phone flopped so badly pulled it within months. 2015–2016 – Free Basics: An effort to offer free internet in developing countries got banned in India for violating net neutrality.
for violating net neutrality. 2019 – Libra: Touted as a revolution in global finance, this cryptocurrency unravelled after regulators pushed back and partners like Visa and PayPal jumped ship.
and PayPal jumped ship. 2021 – Metaverse/Reality Labs : Tens of billions spent, and still no clear return. Even Zuckerberg began dialing down the hype by 2023.
These aren't just failed bets. They're signals: Something deeper isn't working.
Now, as generative AI takes center stage, Meta should be poised to win. AI can supercharge its ad empire. Unlike Google, which risks cannibalising its search empire, Meta faces no such internal disruption.
And yet … ChatGPT owns the conversation. Claude leads in usability. Midjourney dazzles in image generation. Google's Veo impresses in video. Even China's DeepSeek is gaining traction with developers by embracing an open-source approach.2
Where's Meta?
Still tweaking the newsfeed. Still optimising outrage. Still chasing clicks.
It's not a talent problem. Or a budget problem. It's a leadership problem. There is no second act.
Steve Jobs was exiled, and in the wilderness, he was forced to grow. He returned, humbled and transformed, to build the most valuable company on Earth.
Conversely, Mark Zuckerberg has built himself a gilded cage. A kingdom of dual-class shares and unchecked control. He has architected a system wherein he would never need to learn, never have to change, never be fired.
And it worked. That's the tragedy. His company, and his legacy, are paying the price. Vision without growth curdles into stagnation. Ambition without humility becomes a liability.
Meta's Unteachable King cannot build the future. He can only repeat the past – one ad at a time. – Inc./Tribune News Service