Mark Zuckerberg Weirdly Makes Fixing Facebook His ‘Personal Challenge’ For 2018

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is known for making “personal challenges” for himself at every start of a new year. A notable example was when he made visiting all 50 states in the U.S. the challenge for 2017. For 2018, the tech billionaire said that his next “personal challenge” would to fix Facebook, which is unusual since that simply goes with the territory of owning the social network.

In stark contrast to his standpoint after the victory of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential elections, Zuckerberg acknowledged in a post published on Thursday that Facebook was instrumental in terms of the Russian interference. While not explicitly alluding to the election scandal, the Facebook boss noted how the social network was misused.

“The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do -- whether it's protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent,” Zuckerberg wrote.

The Facebook founder also acknowledged that addressing the company’s major problems may not really qualify as a “personal challenge” in his case. However, Zuckerberg emphasized the importance of focusing solely on this one goal instead of treating it as a separate issue.

As The Verge notes, the fact that Zuckerberg is finally willing to accept his company’s responsibility in its role of dividing people is important. Facebook has become one of the world’s most influential companies, not just due to its size and wealth, but because of how it has allowed people from across the globe to participate in key issues.

With countries like Russia being more than willing to use the social network to skew election results and sow division, Facebook and other social media sites need to become more vigilant in preventing such practices. The only way to actually address this problem is by admitting that it exists.