Facebook honcho Mark Zuckerberg spoke at the e-G8 conference in France yesterday and his remarks have been getting a lot of play. He backed off earlier statements about how there should be no minimum age limit for Facebook users. He didn’t change his mind, just said it wasn’t a change they were working on right now. Zuckerberg also denied that Facebook played a significant role in the massive waves of protests and government upheaval happening around the Middle East and Africa.
“Facebook was neither necessary nor sufficient for any of those things to happen. It would be extremely arrogant for any specific technology company to claim credit,” he said.
Well, maybe. And it’s good to be humble. But this is also Facebook backing off any kind of political identification. Facebook has 70% of its users outside the US and laws vary greatly from country to country. Facebook wants to be global, wants people to join, but doesn’t want to be seen as having an ideology.
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