What Mark Zuckerberg Wants

This is a long piece. But we think you should read every word of it. In some senses, it’s a profile of Mark Zuckerberg, one of the most powerful men alive. As the writer, Jeremy Stern, points out, the social networks he oversees have 3.6 billion users, and the company he controls “has averaged, over nearly a quarter century, the addition of a zero to its valuation roughly once every U.S. presidential term.” As commanders in chief come and go, the 42-year-old Facebook founder could rule for several more decades. It behooves all of us to understand him.

But this piece is about so much more than one man. It is, more than anything, about power—the mind-boggling kind that’s accrued to a handful of men who, since the start of the millennium, have invented products that shape how we see everything and, if you believe this week’s headlines about AI, could destroy us all. Do they owe their influence to talent, or luck? Why do so many of them lose their grip on reality? Is their continued reign inevitable, or are they fighting tooth and nail to maintain it? How do they feel about the stories we tell about them? And do they have as much power as we assume they do, when we blame them for all of society’s problems?

Jeremy offers answers to all these questions and more, in this remarkable investigation into Mark Zuckerberg’s character, first published in Colossus, for which he spoke to three dozen people—including the Meta CEO’s parents, his wife, and the man himself. If you’re short on time, click here to understand why Zuckerberg likes getting punched in the face, or click here if you want to understand his relationship to AI. For those who want to print out the whole piece, we’ve made a PDF version, which you’ll find below the paywall.