He’s the dentist’s son who grew up to become the world’s youngest billionaire. In the mid-2000s, Mark Zuckerberg created a website that defined a generation, a website you almost certainly use yourself. The behemoth that is Facebook today dominates the internet. It has more active users than the populations of China and India combined. At time of writing, it’s worth around half a trillion dollars. It’s also at the center of some massive controversies that have dominated headlines.
Yet how much do most of us know about the man behind the website? Perhaps you’ve seen The Social Network, which reimagined Mark Zuckerberg as a kind of Lex Luthor of the internet, using his genius to crush his enemies. There’s an element of truth in that, but the real Mark Zuckerberg is far more interesting, far more nuanced, and far more tragically flawed. Rich, brilliant, idealistic; this is the story of how one privileged kid from small town New York created a digital empire… only to see all his good intentions collapse into dust.
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