Zuckerberg’s Discussions on Future Featured Mostly White Men

(Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg completed his 2019 “personal challenge” on Monday, his version of a New Year’s resolution. This year he pledged to “host a series of public discussions about the future of technology in society -- the opportunities, the challenges, the hopes, and the anxieties.”

The problem? Almost all of Zuckerberg’s discussions were with fellow white men -- who have always dominated the technology industry.

In the six discussion videos Facebook posted throughout the year, 8 of Zuckerberg’s 9 guests were male, and almost all of them were white. Seven were professors or doctors -- and all but one were over the age of 40.

The group’s homogeneity speaks to one of the biggest criticisms of Silicon Valley: That tech is primarily driven and shaped by the decisions of white men, a reality evident in the employee demographics for almost all major technology companies. Facebook has positioned itself as a leader in the push to diversify the industry, and even promised earlier this year to double its female workforce in the next five years. In July, the company reported that about 37% of workers were women, and black people and Hispanics make up just 9% of staff in the U.S. A Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment on Zuckerberg’s personal challenge.

Zuckerberg is in a unique position to change the way technology is shaped and who builds it. As he wrote in January: “There are so many big questions about the world we want to live in and technology’s place in it. Do we want technology to keep giving more people a voice, or will traditional gatekeepers control what ideas can be expressed?”

The CEO hasn’t yet announced what his personal challenge for 2020 will be.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kurt Wagner in San Francisco at kwagner71@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Peter Blumberg

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