I won't let news make Meta users unhappy

Zuckerberg has pivoted from a local news supporter to banning headlines, but he says he's following a societal shift away from news' angry agenda...

Welcome to the latest from a multi-part series exploring the brain of mercurial Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg.

He’s undergoing a personality change, a mid-life crisis if you will; getting tough, telling the world he’s growing up, and seeking to explain himself.

Why not? His personal stock is riding high. Meta’s grown fastest of all Big Tech stocks in 2024, catapulting him to becoming the fourth richest person in history.

Some say this gives him authority to push boundaries, others that it’s feeding his confidence to flout the law.

Either, both, mean a shifting landscape for content creators, including news publishers, as well as Meta’s 3.2 billion global users.

Over several months, I’ve spoken to Zuck’s former execs, analysed internal reports, and read headlines, and leant deeply on what he wrote the last time he opened up.

That 2017 manifesto was written in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when the world and its wife was demanding he was brought to book.

The latest chapter o…