Mark Zuckerberg reveals his biggest mistake as head of Facebook: 'It was a political miscalculation'

Mark Zuckerberg called his largest mistake a '20-year problem'.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently opened up about one of the biggest mistakes in his career. Speaking at a podcast, the 40-year-old said his largest mistake was a “political miscalculation” that he described as a “20-year mistake.” He said that Facebook has spent a lot of time apologising for its content moderation issues which were allegedly out of the company's control.

“Some of the things they were asserting that we were doing or were responsible for, I don’t actually think we were,” Zuckerberg said on the podcast. “When it’s a political problem… there are people operating in good faith who are identifying a problem and want something to be fixed, and there are people who are just looking for someone to blame.”

As per a report in Tech Crunch, the Facebook co-founder was referring to the vague comments on critics blaming Facebook for its part in Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016. At the time, a firm called Cambridge Analytica reportedly took Facebook users’ data and attempted to use it to influence voters to choose Trump. There were also allegations that foreign actors used the platform to influence the election. This resulted in years of bad press for Facebook and Zuckerberg testifying before the parliament.

Zuckerberg said he regretted not being more outspoken about the pressure from the US government at the time and added that now, he’s found the right balance on political issues. He added that in the future, he would “push back if something like this happens again.”